Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (38 page)

She went down into the square in the afternoon, at an hour when milder weather tempted people to walk out and talk in a way once foreign to them. Women and daughters, men and sons, hunters and corpsmen, young and old, strolled forth to pass the time of day. Almost anyone would put himself or herself at Shay Tal’s beck and call; almost no one wanted to talk to her.

Laintal Ay and Dathka were standing with their friends, laughing. Laintal Ay caught Shay Tal’s glance, and came over to her reluctantly when she beckoned.

‘I’m about to conduct an experiment, Laintal Ay. I want you with me as a reliable witness. I won’t get you into further trouble with Aoz Roon.’

‘I’m on good terms with him.’

She explained that the experiment was taking place by the Voral; first, she had a mind to explore the old temple. They walked together through the crowd, Laintal Ay saying nothing.

‘Are you embarrassed to be with me?’

‘I always take pleasure in your company, Shay Tal.’

‘You need not be polite. Do you think I am a sorceress?’

‘You are an unusual woman. I revere you for that.’

‘Do you love me?’

At that, he was embarrassed. Instead of answering directly, he cast his gaze down to the mud, muttering, ‘You are like a mother to me, since my mother died. Why ask such questions?’

‘I wish I were your mother. Then I could be proud. Laintal Ay, you also have an inwardness to your nature. I feel it. That inwardness will distress you, yet it gives you life, it is life. Don’t
ignore it, cultivate it. Most of these people jostling us have no inwardness.’

‘Is inwardness the same as conflict?’

She gave a sharp laugh, gripping her body with her forearms.

‘Listen, we are trapped in this wretched hamlet among meagre personalities. A whole series of greater realities can be happening elsewhere. So much must be done. I may leave Oldorando.’

‘Where will you go?’

She shook her head. ‘Sometimes I feel that the mere crush of dull people will cause us to explode, and we’ll all scatter from here across the world. You note how many babies have been born of recent years.’

He looked round at all the friendly familiar faces in the lane, and suspected that she was talking for effect, though there were more children.

He put his shoulder to the door of the old temple and heaved it open. They entered and stood silent. A bird was trapped inside. It flew round and round, darting close to them as if scrutinising them, then soared upward and escaped through a hole in the roof.

Light filtered down through the gaps, creating shafts through the twilight in which particles of dust whirled. The pigs had recently been moved to outside sties, but their smell still lingered. Shay Tal walked restlessly about, while Laintal Ay stood by the door, looking out into the street remembering how he used to play here as a child.

The walls had been decorated with paintings executed in a stiff manner. Many had been spoiled. She looked up at the tall alcove above where the sacrificial altar stood, its stone dark still with something that could have been blood. Too high for vandals easily to deface hung a representation of Wutra. Shay Tal stood staring up at it, fists on hips.

Wutra was depicted, head and shoulders, in a furry cloak. His eyes glared down from a long animallike face with an expression which could be interpreted as compassion. His face was blue, representing an ideal colour of sky, where he dwelt. Rough white hair, almost manelike, surmounted the head; but the most startling departure from the human norm was a pair of horns thrusting upwards from his skull and terminating in silver bells.

Behind Wutra crowded other figures of a forgotten mythology, mainly horrendous, teeming through the sky. On his left and right shoulder perched his two sentinels. Batalix was depicted as oxlike, bearded, grey and old, with rays of light streaming from his spear. Freyr was larger, a virile green monkey with an hourglass suspended round his neck. His spear was bigger than that of Batalix, and also radiated rays of light.

She turned away, saying briskly, ‘Now my experiment, if Goija Hin is ready.’

‘Did you see what you wanted?’ He was puzzled by her abruptness.

‘I don’t know. Later, I may know. I plan to go into pauk. I would have liked to ask one of the old priests whether Wutra was supposed to preside over the world below as he does over the earth and sky … So many discontinuities.’

Meanwhile, Goija Hin was bringing Myk out of the stable under the big tower. Goija Hin was the slave master, a man who exhibited all the stigmata of his calling. He was short but immensely solid, with bulging arms and legs. His features fitted clumsily on his low-browed face, which was adorned with wisps of whisker, randomly sited. His garments were leather and, waking or sleeping, he was accompanied by a leather knout. Everyone knew Goija Hin, a man impervious to blows or thought.

‘Come on, Myk, you brute, time to make yourself useful,’ he said, speaking in his customary low snarl.

Myk ambled forth promptly, having grown up in slavery. He was the phagor longest in servitude in Oldorando, and could remember Goija Hin’s predecessor, a man of far more terrible aspect. Black hairs grew in his patchy coat. His face was wrinkled, and the sacks under his eyes were messy with rheum.

He was always docile. On this occasion, Oyre was nearby to soothe him. While Oyre patted his bent shoulders, Goija Hin prodded him with a stick.

Oyre had acted as intermediary for Shay Tal and asked her father for permission to use a phagor in Shay Tal’s experiment. Aoz Roon had carelessly told her to take Myk, since he was old.

The two humans led Myk to a curve of the Voral where the river flowed deep. Shay Tal’s ruined tower stood not far away.
Shay Tal and Laintal Ay were already waiting when the trio arrived. Shay Tal stood peering into the depths of the stream as if trying to decipher its secrets, her cheeks hollow, her expression bleak.

‘Well, then, Myk,’ she said challengingly, as the beast approached. She regarded him calculatingly. Scrawny sacks of flesh hung down from his chest and stomach. Goija Hin had already strapped his hands behind his back. His head rolled apprehensively between his hunched shoulders. When he saw the Voral, he ran his milt anxiously up his nostril slits several times in quick succession, uttering a low cry of fear. Could it be that water would turn him into a statue?

Goija Hin gave Shay Tal a rough salute.

‘Tie his legs together,’ Shay Tal ordered.

‘Don’t hurt him too much,’ Oyre said. ‘I’ve known Myk since I was a small girl and he’s entirely docile. He used to give us rides, didn’t he, Laintal Ay?’

Thus appealed to, Laintal Ay came forward. ‘Shay Tal won’t hurt him,’ he said, smiling at Oyre. She regarded him questioningly.

Attracted by possible excitement, several women and boys came up to see what was going on, and stood in knots on the bank.

The river ran deep in the curve, cutting into the near bank only a few inches below the ground on which they stood. On the opposite side of the river, where it was shallower, a thin shelf of ice remained, preserved from direct sun by an overhang. This wafer jutted out towards deeper water, elaborately marked in glassy whorls, as if the water itself had taken a knife to carve it.

When Goija Hin had bound the legs of the unfortunate Myk, he pushed him to the edge of the river. Myk stuck his long head in the air, curled back his lower lips onto his stubbly chin, and let out a trumpet of fear.

Oyre clutched at his coat, begging Shay Tal not to harm him.

‘Stand back,’ Shay Tal said. She gave the signal to Goija Hin to push the phagor in.

Goija Hin set his thick shoulders to Myk’s ribs. The phagor
tottered then plunged into the river with a splash. Shay Tal raised her arms in imperious gesture.

The watching women gave a shout and rushed forward. Rol Sakil was among them. Shay Tal motioned them back.

She stared down into the water and could see Myk struggling below the surface. Swathes of his coat came roiling upward with the disturbed water, brushing the surface like yellow weed.

The water remained water. The phagor remained alive.

‘Pull him up,’ she ordered.

Goija Hin had Myk by two straps. He tugged and Laintal Ay helped. The old phagor’s head and shoulders broke the surface and Myk gave a pathetic cry.

‘Don’t killydrown poor me!’

They dragged him ashore and he lay panting at Shay Tal’s feet. She chewed her underlip, frowning at the Voral. The magic was not working.

‘Throw him in again,’ one of the onlookers called.

‘No more water or I finish,’ Myk said, thickly.

‘Push him in again,’ Shay Tal ordered.

Myk went in a second time, and a third. But the water remained water. No miracle happened, and Shay Tal had to conceal her disappointment.

‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Goija Hin, take Myk away and feed him extra.’

Oyre knelt compassionately by Myk’s throat, crying and patting him. Dark water flowed from the phagor’s lips and he began coughing. Laintal Ay knelt and put his arm round Oyre’s shoulder.

Disdainfully, Shay Tal turned away. The experiment showed that phagors plus water did not make ice. The process was not inevitable. So what had happened at Fish Lake? Equally, she had not managed to turn the Voral to ice, as she had wished to do. So the experiment did not prove she was a sorceress. It did not prove she was not a sorceress; it seemed to prove that she had turned the phagors at Fish Lake to ice – unless there were other factors involved she had not considered.

She paused with her hand on the rough stone of the doorway to her tower, feeling the rasp of lichen against her palm. Until she
found another explanation, she would have to treat herself as others treated her, as a sorceress. The more she starved, the more she respected herself. Of course, as a sorceress, she was destined to remain a virgin; sexual intercourse would destroy her magical powers. She gathered her furs against her lanky form and climbed the worn stairs.

The women on the bank looked from Myk’s half-drowned body, surrounded by a growing puddle, to Shay Tal’s retreating figure.

‘Now what did she want to go and do that for?’ old Rol Sakil asked the company. ‘How come she didn’t drown the stupid thing properly while she was about it?’

The next time the council met, Laintal Ay rose and addressed them. He said that he had heard Shay Tal lecture. All knew of her miracle at Fish Lake, which had saved many lives. Nothing she did was directed to the ill of the community. He proposed that her academy should be recognised and supported.

Aoz Roon looked furious while Laintal Ay spoke. Dathka sat rigid in silence. The old men of the council peered at each other under their eyebrows and muttered uneasily. Eline Tal laughed.

‘What do you wish us to do to aid this academy?’ Aoz Roon asked.

‘The temple is empty. Give it to Shay Tal. Let her hold meetings there every afternoon at promenade time. Use it as a forum, where anyone can speak. The cold has gone, people are freer. Open the temple as an academy for all, for men, women, and children.’

His resounding words died into silence. Then Aoz Roon spoke.

‘She cannot use the temple. We don’t want a new lot of priests. We keep pigs in the temple.’

‘The temple is empty.’

‘From now on, pigs are kept in the temple.’

‘It’s a bad day when we put pigs above the community.’

The meeting eventually broke up in some disorder, as Aoz Roon marched out. Laintal Ay turned to Dathka, his cheeks flushed.

‘Why didn’t you support me?’

Dathka grinned sheepishly, tugged his narrow beard, stared down at the table. ‘You could not win if all Oldorando supported you. He has already banned the academy. You waste your breath, my friend.’

As Laintal Ay was leaving the building, feeling disgusted with the world, Datnil Skar, master of the tawyers and tanners corps, called to him and grasped his sleeve.

‘You spoke well, young Laintal Ay, yet Aoz Roon was right in what he said. Or, if not right, not unreasonable. If Shay Tal spoke in the temple, she would become a priestess and be worshipped. We don’t want that – our ancestors got rid of the priests some generations ago.’

Laintal Ay knew Master Datnil for a kindly and modest man. Restraining his anger, he looked .down at the worn face and asked, ‘Why tell me this?’

Master Datnil looked about to see that no one was listening.

‘Worship arises from ignorance. Believing in one fixed thing is a mark of ignorance. I respect attempts to drum facts into people’s heads. I wanted to say that I am sorry you were defeated, though I don’t agree with your proposition. I would be willing to address Shay Tal’s academy if she will have me.’

He removed his fur hat and set it on the lichenous sill. He smoothed his sparse grey hair and cleared his dry throat. He looked about him and smiled nervously. Although he had known everyone in the room since he was born, he was unaccustomed to the role of speaker. His stiff clothes creaked as he shifted from one foot to another.

‘Don’t be afraid of us, Master Datnil,’ Shay Tal said.

He caught the note of impatience in her voice. ‘It’s only of your intolerance I’m afraid, ma’am,’ he replied, and some of the women squatting on the floor hid smiles behind their hands.