Across the Face of the World (70 page)

He compared them unfavourably with his own villagers, with the Fodhram, even with the Fenni. They spoke the common tongue only when necessary, and were indifferent at best to travellers.

'Stick to the path, then, and let me do the talking, though how much use I can be is uncertain. I avoided this land on my way west, choosing instead to take the northern roads through Asgowan and Haurn, and came into Treika through Whitefang Pass.'

'I hope Instruere is not like this.'

'It's not,' said Phemanderac cryptically. 'It is quite different.'

Finally, in the last week of June, and in heat and humidity the like of which Leith had never experienced, they came to what at first appeared to be a lake, with a bridge stretching away into the hazy distance.

'The Aleinus,' Phemanderac announced. 'Another hour and we'll be there.'

'This is a river?' Leith asked, incredulous. 'Surely there cannot be this much water in all the mountains of the world!'

'Indeed it is a river; well, actually, it is the River. When in flood it can be many miles across, brown with silt from the upriver coun¬tries, so the locals told me when I came through here last year. Did you notice how the Westway runs along the top of an earthen bank? That arrangement keeps it above all but the largest of the floods. This was built, apparently, after the Bhrudwan invasion, when the armies of northern Faltha were cut off from Instruere by a vast flood.'

Phemanderac had stepped on to the bridge as he talked, to be interrupted by a bald-headed man who swung a wooden gate closed in front of them. 'No one crosses the Longbridge without proper authority,' he growled.

'What authority is this?' the gaunt philosopher asked, puzzled.

'If you have to ask, you obviously do not have it,' came the abrupt reply. 'Now, move on.'

'There was no gate on this bridge last year!'

'Stranger,' the man said with exaggerated patience, 'there is a gate here now. That is all that matters.'

'But we need to get to Instruere!' Leith cried.

'Then enter from Straux,' came the rumbling reply. 'There is no gate on the bridge from Straux.'

'And how, good sir, do we get to Straux,' Phemanderac responded heavily, 'when the only bridge south is this one?'

The bald man shrugged his shoulders. Behind them a line of people began to form.

'Be reasonable!' Phemanderac said, exasperated by the offi-ciousness of the man. 'I just want to leave Deuverre and go to Instruere!' But the man had turned aside and was talking to a young couple, who showed him a small yellow piece of paper. The gate swung open and they passed through, walking rapidly off into the distance.

While the two travellers watched, a succession of people showed their yellow papers and gained access to the bridge. Then one man, with a wife and several small children in tow, could not produce his paper. Even with his keen eyes, Phemanderac nearly missed the discreet exchange of money, but the gate swung open and the man and his family passed through.

Phemanderac turned to Leith. 'This is obviously another Instruian moneymaking scheme.

They're famous for them. Come, we must find out where to get a piece of paper each - or, more likely, some money with which to purchase them.'

After a great deal of fruitless inquiry, in which many of the local populace appeared not to wish to discuss the subject, Phemanderac finally discovered that Instruere had imposed a tax on all Deuverrans who worked in the great city and, finding it an easy and lucrative source of revenue, had extended it to cover all travellers. The only way of avoiding the tax was to obtain an exemption from the mayor of Instruere, at whose discretion a yellow paper could be issued. At first this was limited to those who were deemed of importance to the city, but soon it became known that exemptions could be purchased from certain city officials for a fraction of the cost of the tax.

'Is there nowhere else apart from Instruere I can buy a yellow paper?' Phemanderac asked angrily.

His informant shook her head.

'So all I have to do is to go to Instruere and find the right man, and purchase from him a yellow paper. Except I need the paper to get across the bridge. Surely this is someone's idea of a joke!'

Leith spoke up. 'Perhaps we could find someone willing to sell their papers.'

'And what would we pay for them with? You forget we have no money - and the lady here tells us the papers cost the equiva¬lent of two days' wages each.'

'Is there no other way into the city?'

'Apparently not,' the philosopher answered, but his gaze rested on the line of small fishing smacks at the water's edge.

That night they found a fisherman willing to spite the tax men in return for assistance with the evening's catch. As a result, it was two weary, tired and foul-smelling companions who clambered out of the boat on to the far shore under a half-moon, and spent a chilly few hours waiting for the sun to rise and the city gate to open.

'I'll remember this,' Phemanderac said, stretching his stiffening back. 'There is as little civility here as we found on Clovenhill.'

Leith shuddered. 'At least they've not tried to throw us down any deep holes.'

'What is bureaucracy if it is not a deep hole? There was no need for this!'

Leith shook his head. They had risked death - and at least one of their companions had died -

to bring a warning to this great city, and yet at journey's end they were denied entry, having instead to sneak in like thieves. If this was how the prophecies of his great¬ness were to be fulfilled, he would rather turn around and make for home now. Home. Sheltering under the towering walls of Instruere, he could think of nothing but his rustic village. His place was the village, he realised, and he would never rise above it. Greatness was for the great. He would be happy with - what? His thoughts returned to that familiar image, that bright smile and the happiness it might bestow on the one who won its favour.

Though its buildings were the wonder of the western world, and its streets reeked of the passage of the years, Instruere was not quite the fabulous city of which its inhabitants boasted.

This was due in no small part to the circumstances of its birth. When the First Men had arrived in Straux over two thousand years ago, they found a collection of mud huts at that point where the Aleinus, the father of rivers, divides into a delta. With little regard for cere¬mony - or for the local inhabitants - rival towns were built on the large island they found there, Inna on the northern shore, Struere on the southern. This division reflected the contention between the First Men over the guardianship of the Jugom Ark, the Arrow of Yoke, the symbol of the favour of the Most High, and for a bitter generation those who dwelt in the two towns looked across at each other over a few hundred yards of open ground: looked, but made no contact. Finally, when the decision was made to allow Bewray to take the arrow south, an uneasy reconciliation was reached and the two towns worked together.

Eventually from this coalescing union came a third town, engulfing the island in the middle of the Aleinus, and Instruere was born.

Instruere's planners sought to make it the capital of the world, building on a scale unparalleled in Faltha, even when earnings were not sufficiently large to justify it. Time and again specula¬tors invested in grand schemes, time and again moneylenders called in their loans and the grand schemes failed, but on the ruins of such schemes the great city was built. After the speculators came the traders who claimed the western end of the island as their own, erecting on it vast warehouses and sending long wharves out into the wide blue-green waters to which came barges and scows from throughout Faltha, creating real wealth for the first time.

Centuries of trading cemented the place of Instruere as a commercial centre, and from the profits they made the masters of trade were able to patronise the arts and sciences, which flour¬ished during the Golden Age of Faltha in the second five hundred years after the fall of Dona Mihst. The governors of Instruere constructed a Hall of Lore, modelled after that of the Vale of old; following the pattern of Dona Mihst, a tall tower was raised, a monument to their high past rather than as a place of worship. The largest and most ornate building in the city, the cavernous Hall of Meeting, was also the most expensive ever built, with carven ceilings that occupied the most talented artisans in the land for ten years. Its main hall stretched over fifteen hundred feet in length, and it stood over a hundred feet high. These buildings housed the most prized artefacts - paintings, sculptures, music -of each generation, and the Council of Faltha made its home in the Hall of Meeting.

The heavily defended city had been taken only once by an enemy, and that without a fight.

The end of the Golden Age was signalled by the Bhrudwan invasion, when the armies of southern Faltha were defeated by the superior army of the Destroyer on the fields of Straux, a few leagues south of Instruere. While the south remembered only that the north did not fight with them, they forgot the storm that kept the northerners pinned in Deuverre, unable to lend assistance. The Destroyer walked unchallenged in victory into Instruere and set up a hundred years of government in the Hall of Meeting.

When eventually he was driven out - whether by sickness, as some said, or by the weakening of his forces through intermar¬riage, or by insurrection, as Instruians claimed - his rule was replaced by a strengthened council made up of representatives of the southern Falthan nations.

This was extended to include all Falthans in NA173, when a new generation concerned itself more with the politics of trade than gnawing the bones of old griev¬ances, and it is from this date that existence of the full Council of Faltha is reckoned. It was with this powerful, inscrutable body that the Company sought audience - if they could win their way to the city.

The day after the musician and his companion left Inch Chanter another foreigner, also dressed in the clothes of the Widuz, made his way across the fields. Behind him came the bedraggled remnants of the prisoners of Adunlok, those the foreigner had managed to regather from their hiding places in ditches and hedgerows. These prisoners were Treikans, most from Inch Chanter and the surrounding farmlands, men and women who had been mourned as dead, and the joy of the townspeople when they beheld their lost sons and daughters was without bounds. They feted this stranger, the more so when the full story was told, but the stranger wanted little of their praise or celebration. Urgently he asked after a tousle-haired youth and was astonished to find he had missed his son by less than twelve hours.

Though the storm had scattered the Widuz, it had not destroyed them. They encamped around the walled town and laid siege to it for five days, determined to avenge the death of Talon, their champion, killed in Wambakalven, the womb of Mother Earth. Farmers working their fields were prevented from returning home by the sword-wielding Widuz, and no one could leave by either of the two gates. As much as Mahnum wished to pursue his son, he could not.

'What do they want?' the elders of the town asked the stranger.

'Us,' Mahnum said. 'Myself and the other former captives.'

'What have you done that makes them so eager to get at you?'

'I killed one of their guards; that and emptying their cells of potential sacrifices undoubtedly earned their displeasure.'

'You have done a brave and noble thing,' the elders told him, 'and for the moment you are the hero of the town. But after a week or two without food or fresh water, and with many of our people left to find shelter on the open plain or in other towns, people may be less enthusiastic at your continued residence here.'

'I understand. But what is stopping us simply driving them away? At most there are two dozen Widuz outside your walls, while there must be at least a hundred able-bodied men in this town.'

'Who no doubt wish to remain able-bodied,' came the quick reply.

'Are you trying to tell me that you want me to surrender to these killers?' Mahnum looked heatedly around the sumptuously appointed room, but each one there avoided his gaze.

'So I just walk through the gate and into their sword blades?'

One man cleared his throat; still no one spoke.

Mahnum felt anger rise within him. 'Perhaps we could make it a social event! You could all watch from the walls, and I could call out so you know how I feel as they cut me down! Or would this complete the great myth of the gallant stranger who rescued townspeople from the Widuz and then gave his life for the town? Well?

'I thought it would have taken a certain amount of courage to live here, close as you are to Clovenhill, but I see I was mistaken. At least lend me a sword, so I might give a good account of myself.

May my death be on your conscience!' And with those words he snatched a broadsword and a jewelled scabbard from the wall, and strode towards the door.

'Not that sword!' came a plaintive cry from behind him. 'That's the sword of Jethart, the great warrior captain of Treika, and a mighty heirloom. It is worth more than all of Inch Chanter together!'

'Then may it serve me well!' Mahnum growled and, as the stunned gathering of elders looked on, he drew the sword from the scabbard and swung it in a great arc about him. 'There are none here worthy even to display it on their walls. Or does anyone want to take it from me?'

No one moved.

'I thought not. Pray for my success, or prepare to watch your precious heirloom be taken to the fastness of Adunlok!'

He slammed the door behind him, but already anger was giving way to prudence. A bold and heroic gesture his death might be, but the secrets of the Destroyer's great strategy were locked in his mind, and his death would deal a severe blow to the Falthan cause. He stormed out into the main street and through the throng of curious onlookers.

Something pulled at his sleeve, and Mahnum was about to knock it away when he saw that it was a small boy. 'What do you want?' he growled.

'Excuse me, mister,' he stammered, 'but my aulfather wants to have a word with you.'