He scrambled up on his knees, looking wretched. "Not so, not so. You'll be – everything, Oyre, everything. We're nothing without each other."
"For a few weeks, yes."
"What do you expect?"
"What do I expect…." Her eyes rolled upwards, and she sighed. She smoothed back her still damp hair and looked away, at the young bushes, at the sky, at the birds. "It's not that I have such a high regard for myself. I can do so little. By remaining independent like Shay Tal, perhaps I can achieve something."
"Don't talk that way. You need someone to protect you. Shay Tal, Vry – they're not happy. Shay Tal never laughs, does she? Besides, she's old. I'd look after you and make you happy. I want nothing better."
She was buttoning up her tunic, looking down at the toggles which she herself had designed (to the tailor's amazement), so that the skins could be put on and off without trouble.
"Oh, Laintal Ay, I'm so difficult. I have difficulty with myself. I don't really know what I want. I long to dissolve and flow like this wonderful water. Who knows where it comes from, where it goes to? – from the very eddre of earth, maybe…. I do love you, though, in my horrid way. Listen, we'll have an arrangement."
She stopped fiddling with her tunic and came to stand looking down at him, hands on her hips.
"Do something great and astonishing, one thing, one deed, and I'll be your woman for ever. You understand that? A great deed, Laintal Ay – a great deed and I'm yours. I'll do whatever you wish."
He got up and stood away from her, surveying her. "A great deed? What sort of great deed do you mean? By the original boulder, Oyre, you are a strange girl."
She tossed her damp hair. "If I told you, then it would no longer be great. Do you understand that? Besides, I don't know what I mean. Strive, strive … You're getting fat already, as if you were pregnant…."
He stood without moving, his face hard. "How is it that when I tell you I love you – you insult me in return?"
"You tell me truth – I hope; I tell you truth. But I don't mean to hurt you. Really I'm gentle. You just released things in me, things I've said to no one else. I long for … no, I can't say what the longings are for … glory. Do something great, Laintal Ay, I beg you, something great, before we grow too old."
"Like killing phagors?"
Suddenly she laughed on rather a harsh note, narrowing her eyes. For a moment, her resemblance to Aoz Roon was marked. "If that's all you can think of. Provided you kill a million of them."
He looked baffled.
"So you imagine you're worth a million phagors?"
Oyre pretended to smite herself hard on the forehead, as if her harneys had come loose. "It's not for me, don't you see? It's for yourself. Achieve one great thing for your own sake. Here we're stuck in what Shay Tal says is a farmyard – at least make it a legendary farmyard."
The ground trembled again. "Scumble," he said. "The earth really is moving."
They stood up, shaken out of their argument, ignoring each other. A bronze overcast spread from the aerial castles, which now took on purple hearts and yellow edges. The heat became intense, and they stood in the midst of an oppressive silence; backs to each other, looking about.
A repeated smacking sound made them turn towards the pool. Its surface was marred by yellow bubbles which rose and grew until they burst, to spread filth through the hitherto clear water. The bubbles sailed up from the depths, releasing a stink of rotten eggs, coming faster and blacker. Thick mist filled the hollow.
A jet of mud burst from the pool and sprayed into the air. Gobbets of scalding filth flew, pocking the foliage all about. The humans ran in terror, she in her garb the colour of summer skies.
Within a minute of their leaving, the pool was a mass of black seething liquid.
Before they could get back to Oldorando, the skies opened, and down came the rain, grey, and chilling to the flesh.
As they climbed into the big tower, voices could be heard overhead, Aoz Roon's prominent among them. He had just arrived back with allies of his own generation, Tanth Ein, Faralin Ferd, and Eline Tal, all sturdy warriors and good hunters; with them were their women, exclaiming over new hoxney skins, and Dol Sakil, who sat sulkily apart on the window sill, regardless of the rain beating down. Also in the room was Raynil Layan, his skins perfectly dry; he fingered his forked beard and looked anxiously back and forth, without either speaking or being spoken to.
Aoz Roon spared his natural daughter no more than a look before saying challengingly to Laintal Ay, "You've been missing again."
"For a while, yes. I'm sorry. I was inspecting the defences. I –"
Aoz Roon laughed curtly and looked at his companions as he said, "When you enter in that state, with Oyre with her fancy garb unlaced, I know you have been inspecting something other than the defences. Don't lie to me, you young fighting cock!"
The other men laughed. Laintal Ay went crimson.
"I'm no liar. I went to inspect our defences – but we have no defences. There are no sentries, no guards, while you were lying drinking in the wilderness. Oldorando could fall to one single armed Borlienian. We're taking life too easy, and you set a poor example."
He felt Oyre's steadying hand on his arm.
"He spends little time here now," Dol called, in a teasing voice, but was ignored, for Aoz Roon had turned to his other companions and said, "You see what I have to endure from my lieutenants, so-called. Always impudence. Oldorando is now concealed and protected by green, growing higher every week. When the warlike weather returns, as return it will, that will be time enough for war. You're trying to make trouble, Laintal Ay."
"Not so. I'm trying to prevent it."
Aoz Roon walked forward and confronted him, his immense black figure towering over the youth.
"Then keep quiet. And don't lecture me."
Above the noise of the downpour, cries could be heard outside. Dol turned to stare out of the window and called that someone was in trouble. Oyre ran to join her.
"Stand back," Aoz Roon shouted, but the three older women also jostled to get close to the window. The room became even darker.
"We'll go and see what's happening," Tanth Ein said. He started down the stairs, his great shoulders almost blocking the trap as he descended, with Faralin Ferd and Eline Tal after him. Raynil Layan remained in the shadows, watching them go. Aoz Roon made as if to stop them, then stood indecisively in the middle of the dull room, regarded only by Laintal Ay.
The latter came forward and said, "My temper ran away with me; you shouldn't have called me a liar. Don't let that mean that my warning goes unheeded. Our responsibility is to keep the place guarded as we used to."
Aoz Roon bit his lip and did not listen.
"You get your ideas from that damned woman Shay Tal." He spoke absently, one ear cocked to the noises outside. Masculine shouts were now added to the earlier cries. The women at the window also set up a great noise, running about and clinging to Dol and to each other.
"Come away!" cried Aoz Roon, grabbing Dol angrily. Curd, the great yellow hound, started to howl.
The world danced to drumming rain. The figures below the tower were grey in the downpour. Two of the three burly hunters were lifting a body from the mud, while the third, Faralin Ferd, was endeavouring to put his arms about two old women in rain-soaked furs and direct them towards shelter. The old women, uninterested in comfort, raised their faces in grief, rain pouring into their open mouths. They were recognisable as Datnil Skars woman and an ancient widow, the aunt of Faralin Ferd.
The women had dragged the body in from the north gate between them, covering it and themselves with mud in the process. As the hunters straightened up with their burden, the body was revealed. Its visage was distorted and masked by blood so caked that the rain did not wash it away. Its head fell back as the hunters heaved it high. Blood still gouted across its face and garments. Its throat had been bitten out, as cleanly as a man bites a great mouthful from an apple.
Dol began t
o shriek. Aoz Roon pushed past her, thrust his burly shoulders into the window space, and called down at those below, "Don't bring that thing in here."
The men chose to disregard him. They were making for the nearest shelter. Jets of rainwater were spewing down from the parapets above them. They floundered in the muck with their muddy burden.
Aoz Roon cursed and ran from the room, charging downstairs, Curd following. Caught by the drama of the moment, Laintal Ay followed, with Oyre, Dol, and the other women behind him, jostling on the narrow steps. Raynil Layan came more slowly in the rear.
The hunters and the old women dragged or escorted the dead body into the low-ceilinged stable to drop it on scattered straw. The men stood away, wiping their faces with their hands, as a puddle of water in which blood spiralled leaked from the body, to set afloat wisps of straw, which turned uncertainly on the flood like boats seeking an estuary. The old women, grotesque bundles, cried on each other's shoulders monumentally. Although the face of the dead man was plastered with blood and hair there was no doubt of his identity. Master Datnil Skar, with Curd sniffing at his cold ear, lay dead before them.
Tanth Ein's woman was a personable creature, by name Farayl Musk. She broke into a series of long wailing cries, which she was unable to stifle.
Nobody could mistake the deadly neck wound for anything but a phagor bite. The mode of execution common in Pannoval had been passed on, for when need arose, as it rarely did, by Yuli the Priest. Somewhere outside in the pouring rain was Wutra, waiting. Wutra, for ever at war. Laintal Ay thought of Shay Tal's alarming claim that Wutra was a phagor. Perhaps there really was a god, perhaps he really was a phagor. His mind went back to the time earlier in the day, before he had found Oyre naked, when he had seen Goija Hin leading Myk to the north gate. There was no doubt who was responsible for this death; he thought how Shay Tal would have fresh cause for sorrow.
He looked at the stricken faces about him – and RayniI Layan's gloating one – and took courage. In a loud voice, he said, "Aoz Roon, I name you the killer of this good old man." He pointed at Aoz Roon as if imagining that some present did not know whom he designated.
All eyes turned to the Lord of Embruddock, who stood with his head against the rafters, his face pale. He said harshly, "Don't dare speak against me. One word more from you, Laintal Ay, and I will strike you down."
But Laintal Ay could not be stopped. Full of anger, be cried mockingly, "Is this another of your cruel blows against knowledge – against Shay Tal?"
The others murmured, restless in the confined space. Aoz Roon said, "This is justice. I have information that Datnil Skar allowed outsiders to read the secret book of his corps. It's a forbidden act. Its just penalty is now, as it always was, death."
"Justice! Does this look like justice? This blow has all the stealth of murder. You've all seen – it's carried out like the murder of –"
Aoz Roon's attack was hardly unexpected, but its ferocity knocked his guard away. He struck back at Aoz Roon's face, dancing black with rage before him. He heard Oyre shriek. Then a fist caught him squarely on the side of the jaw.
Detachedly, he saw himself stagger backwards, trip over the sodden corpse, and sprawl powerless on the stable floor.
He was aware of screams, shouting, boots trampling round him. He felt the kicks in his ribs. There was confusion as they took him up like the body they had dropped – he attempting to protect his skull from knocking against a wall – and carried him outside into the downpour. He heard thunder like a giant pulse.
From the steps, they flung him bodily into the mud. The rain came flying down into his face. As he sprawled there, he realised that he was no longer Aoz Roon's lieutenant. From now on, their enmity was out in the open, apparent to all.
•••
Rain continued to fall. Belts of dense cloud rolled across the central continent. An atmosphere of stalemate prevailed over the affairs of Oldorando.
The distant army of the young kzahhn, Hrr-Brahl Yprt, was forced to halt its advance, to shelter among the shattered hills of the east. Its components went into a sort of tether rather than face the downpour.
The phagors also experienced earth tremors, which originated from the same source as those afflicting Oldorando. Far to the north, old rift zones in the Chalce region were undergoing violent seismic upheaval. As the burden of ice disappeared, the earth shook and rose up.
By this period, the ocean that girdled Helliconia became free of ice even beyond the wide tropical zones, which stretched from the equator to latitudes thirty-five degrees north and south. The westward circulation of oceanic waters built up in a series of tsunami, which devastated coastal regions all round the globe. The floodings often combined with vulcanism to alter the land area.
All such geological events were monitored by the instruments of the Earth Observation Station, which Vry called Kaidaw. The readings were signalled back to distant Earth. No planet in the galaxy was watched more intensely than Helliconia.
•••
Account was taken of the dwindling herds of yelk and biyelk which inhabited the northern Campannlat plain; their pasturage was threatened. Kaidaws, on the other hand, were multiplying as marginal lands, hitherto barren, provided grazing.
There were two sorts of ancipital community on the tropical continent: static components without kaidaws, which lived close to the land, and mobile or nomadic groups with kaidaws. Not only was the kaidaw a highly mobile animal in its own right; its fodder consumption forced those who domesticated it to move continuously in search of new foraging grounds. The army of the young kzahhn, for example, consisted of numerous small components committed to a nomadic and often warlike existence. Their crusade was only one aspect of a migration, which would take decades to complete, from east to west of the entire continent.
A tremor which brought down avalanches about the kzahhn's army marked the tail end of an upheaval in the planet's crust which deflected a river of meltwater flowing from the Hhryggt Glacier. A new valley opened. The new river coursed through it, and henceforth flowed westwards instead of north, as previously.
This river burst its way down to become a tributary of the river Takissa, streaming southwards to empty into the Sea of Eagles. Its waters ran black for many years; they carried with them dozens of metric tons of demolished mountain every day.
Flooding caused by the new river through its new valley forced one insignificant group of phagors of the nomadic type to disperse in the direction of Oldorando instead of heading east. Their destiny was to encounter Aoz Roon at a later date. Though their deflection at the time was of little seeming importance even to the ancipitals themselves, it was to alter the social history of the sector.
•••
There were, on the Avernus, those who studied the social history of Helliconian cultures; but it was the heliographers who regarded their science as the most valuable. Before all else came the light.
Star B, which the natives below called Batalix, was a modest spectral class G4 sun. In real terms slightly smaller than Sol, its radius being 0.94 Sol's, its apparent size as seen from Helliconia was 76 percent that of Sol seen from Earth. With a photosphere temperature of 5600 Kelvin, its luminosity was only 0.8 that of Sol. It was about five billion years old.
The more distant star, known locally as Freyr, about which Star B revolved, was a much more impressive object as viewed from the Avernus. Star A was a brilliant white spectral class A-type supergiant, with a radius sixty-five times that of Sol's, and a luminosity sixty thousand times as great. Its mass was 14.8 times Sol's, and its surface temperature 11000K, as opposed to Sol's 5780K.
Although Star B had its constant students, Star A was a greater magnet for attention, especially now that the Avernus was moving, along with the rest of Star B's system, nearer to the supergiant.
Freyr was between ten and eleven million years old. It had evolved away from the main sequence of stars and was already entering its old age.
Such was the intensity of the e
nergy it poured out that the disc of Star A was always more intense as viewed from Helliconia than that of Star B, though it never appeared so large, owing to its much greater distance. It was a worthy object for ancipital fear – and for Vry's admiration.
•••
Vry stood alone on the top of her tower, her telescope by her side. She waited. She watched. She felt the history of private relationships flowing towards the morrow like a silt-laden river; what had been fresh was clogged with sediment. Beneath her passivity was an unformulated longing to be seized up by some larger thing which would provide wider, purer perspectives than faulty human nature could command.
When darkness fell, she would look again at the stars – provided the cloud cover parted sufficiently.
Oldorando was now surrounded by palisades of green. Day by day, new leaves unfurled and mounted higher, as if nature had a plan to bury the town in forest. Some of the more distant towers had already been overwhelmed by vegetation.
She saw a large white bird hover above one such mound without paying it particular attention. She watched and admired its effortless hovering above the earth.
Distantly came the sound of men singing. The hunters were back in Oldorando from a hoxney hunt, and Aoz Roon was holding a feast. The feast was in honour of his three new lieutenants, Tanth Ein, Faralin Ferd, and Eline Tal. These friends of his childhood supplanted Dathka and Laintal Ay, who were now relegated to the chase.
Vry tried to keep her thoughts abstract, but they drifted back continually to the more emotional subject of defeated hope – hers, Dathka's, whose desires she could not find it in herself to encourage, Laintal Ay's. Her mood was in tune with the long-protracted evening. Batalix was down, the other sentinel would follow in an hour. This was a time when men and beasts made preparations against the reign of night. This was a time to bring out a stub of candle against some undreamed-of emergency, or to resolve to sleep until the light of dawn.