Return to the Whorl (The Book of the Short Sun #3) 7

That reminded me of the azoth at last, and the azoth of the sword that I had re-created for myself on the Red Sun Whorl, the sword I had flung to the wretched omophagist in the lion pit-the sword that had melted in his hands. I shaped a needler for myself then, and when it felt solid in my grasp fired again and again at the inhumi.

The effects were extraordinary. Some tumbled out of the air and fell to their deaths. Some merely seemed frightened, conscious that they had been injured in some way, wounded but bewildered as to the nature of the wound. Some seemed wholly proof against its needles and prosecuted their attacks until I actually clubbed them with it. If these had rushed me en masse, I would have fallen and been killed, without doubt; but it was my blood they wanted, not my life, and my mangled corpse at the bottom of the cliff could have supplied very little of it. That saved me.

Here I am tempted to write that the cliff-top appeared suddenly above me, for that was how it seemed to me. The truth, of course, was considerably more prosaic-I had been inching toward it without knowing what the distance was, had climbed altogether about three times the height of the tower, and so had reached it. I do not believe I could have done it in the body that lay sprawled on the floor of Judge Hamer's sellaria. Fortunately, I did not have to; the weight I lifted-clawing, sometimes, with bleeding fingers at the red rock-face-although it felt real, was substantially less than my true weight.

To have attained the top was enough at first. I lay on my back gasping and shuddering, firing the needler at any inhumi who came too near. A woman spoke. I supposed that it was one of the inhumi who had taunted me with lies during my climb, and paid little attention. Then Jahlee was bending over me, her sorrel hair brushing my cheek and her sweet and beautiful face peering into mine. "You came back! I'd given up."

"I was imprisoned," I told her. "We were already under arrest when you left, remember?" Aware that the inhumi were no longer attacking, I sat up with her assistance.

A new voice asked, "Is this your male half, Misted One? His blood does not fill our bellies." The speaker was an inhumu, in form a dwarfish, hairless, emaciated man.

Jahlee nodded. "This is my father."

He began to speak again; but I cannot recall the words; there were only two or three at most. I shot him, my needle piercing the center of his chest, and watched him die.

"Why did you do that?" Jahlee was aghast.

"I have had a sharp reminder of what we are, and what they are."

"These... They worship me, Rajan. They won't use the word, but that's what it is. We... They bring me food I can't eat. Children, and all the while I know my body's starving up there."

I was about to ask what became of the children whose blood she was unable to drink (although I was afraid I knew) when my attention was drawn to a new figure, tall and tightly wrapped in a colorless cloak, approaching us with stiff, bird-like strides. Seeing him, I realized that what I had taken to be a large black boulder was in fact a squat domed building without windows.

Jahlee was telling me (no doubt correctly) that I should not have killed her friend. I said, "Will you forgive me? I've forgiven you a great deal, and made you my daughter though you were once my slave."

It has been days since I wrote. I have been very remiss, but it has been a busy time. We are about to leave. I will pass over the Neighborwhat we said will quickly become apparent. Tomorrow we sail for home; if I wish to record my trial at all, I had better do it today.

It was held in what is called the Palace of Justice, a big, solidly constructed building with courtrooms for all five judges. I had been taken from Aanvagen's house several hours before and locked in a cell in the back of the building. Oreb visited me there, slipping between the bars on my window without difficulty, and on his second visit brought Babbie.

It was very good to see him again. "You've grown," I said. "Why, just look at you! You were no bigger than a big dog when I freed you."

Are you really my old master? (This was said with Babbie's eyes; it is the only way he has of talking, but generally works well enough.)

I put my arm through the bars, and he stood on his four hind legs, with all four forelegs braced against the wall, and snuffled my fingers. His coat-cannot call it fur-was as stiff as the bristles of a hairbrush.

Yes! Yes, you are!

"I am indeed, and very glad to see you, Babbie. I need your help badly. Will you help me? It may be dangerous."

"Bird help!"

I nodded. "You've been of great help already, and I must ask more of you. You must help Babbie find the courtroom when they take me away. It will be in this building, in front."

"Bird find!"

He did, too.

Having written about Oreb, I could not resist the impulse to open the window in the hope that he might have returned. He was not there. I thrust my head out and saw several birds, but he was not among them.

I was brought into the courtroom with manacles on my wrists, which they seemed to think would shame me. I felt no shame, but a sort of urgent joy. Either we would succeed and my troubles here would be ended (as they have been, only to be succeeded by others) or we would fail and I, at least, would be killed. Very likely my daughter and both sons would be killed as well-but then, death waits for all of us, not that I wished to see them die; it was very good indeed to find all three waiting in the courtroom with my advocate.

Now that I have mentioned him, I realize I should have written about him before beginning this description of my trial, but it is too late. His name is Vent, and he is middle-aged, bald, and paunchy. I have appointed him a judge.

He rose to greet me, and Hoof and Hide stood too. Then Hamer entered, robed in black like an augur, and we all had to stand. It was only then, I believe, that I realized how full the courtroom was, and from the noise that penetrated its massive doors that there was a crowd outside clamoring to get in as well. Certainly it was then that Cijfer caught my eye, pointing to the red-faced man with her and mouthing words I did not understand. She looked very happy and almost beside herself with excitement, so that I assumed there was good news of some kind. I smiled at her and tried to look as confident as I could while puzzling over the identity of the red-faced man, whom I felt sure I should recognize.

Chapter 10. THROUGH QUADRIFONS' DOOR

Pig stopped whistling to say, "Nae sae far noo, bucky. Lookin' forward ter h'it?"

"To revisiting the city in which I was born?" (By an effort he had avoided the word seeing.) "To tell the truth, I dread it. It will have changed, and not for the better I'm afraid. It can scarcely be for the better. Hound, you said that Silk is no longer calde-"

"Good Silk!" Oreb, who had been riding atop the second packdonkey, flew to his shoulder, a sudden blossoming of black and scarlet in the bright sunshine.

"So who is?"

"Who's calde now?" From his seat on the lead donkey, Hound looked over his shoulder. "General Mint's husband. His name's Bison. Calde Bison."

"That's good. I know him slightly."

"You're going to talk to him?"

Oreb muttered, "Talk Silk."

"I'm going to try." He was silent after that, his mind occupied with the empty houses they had passed, and the houses (many empty too, presumably) they were approaching. Up this road Silk had ridden with Auk, and down it he had ridden in a flyer driven by Willet; but he had not said much about it. He tried to recall whether he himself had ever traveled it, concluded he had not, and then, at the sight of a narrow old house whose pink paint had faded to near invisibility and whose shiprock was crumbling, was inundated by a rush of memories. Nettle, and a slug gun on his shoulder, Maytera Marble and the ragged crowd of volunteers singing to keep their spirits up.

Trampin' outwards from the city,

No more lookin' than was she,

'Twas there I spied a garden pretty,

A fountain and an apple tree.

These fair young girls live to deceive you,

Sad experience teaches me.

There had been other songs, many of them, but that was the only one he could remember. Nettle would know them all.

He turned to look back at the house, but it had vanished behind trees. How long had it stood empty? Twenty years, or fifteen, or ten. Its roof had leaked with no one to repair it, letting water into cracks in the shiprock. That water had frozen in winter, splitting the walls farther each year.

"Talk talk," Oreb suggested. "Talk good."

He smiled. "If you wish. You asked whether I was happy to be returning to my native city, Pig. I said I was saddened by the thought of what must have happened to it in my absence. We just passed a house that I recalled."

"Ken ther people?"

"No. But I marched past it once, when I was a boy, and we were singing a song about a house with an apple tree in the garden. I saw that one, and it did indeed have a small garden with an apple tree. I seem to remember that there were a few apples on the upper branches, though I can't be sure. It seemed a marvelous coincidence at the time, a magical coincidence and a good omen. We were hungry for good omens just then. We weren't even amateur troopers, though we thought we were."

"Ho, aye."

"Masons and carpenters with slug guns they scarcely knew how to fire, and mortar and sawdust on their knees. I had one, and a needler, and was immensely proud of both. You were a trooper, Pig. I hope you had more training than I did."

"Nae muckle."

"No talk." Oreb had caught something in Pig's tone.

"I've been wondering-I hope you won't think I'm prying, though perhaps I am-whether you weren't given some sort of ceremony of initiation. A sacrifice to Sphigx at some manteion to dedicate you and your comrades to the art of war."

Pig did not reply.

"In some ways you remind me of a man called Auk; and Auk was quite religious, in spite of all his violence and swagger."

"Would yer gods a' let 'em take me een, bucky? Prayed ter proper an' h'all?"

He shrugged. "I suppose they could have stepped in to prevent such cruelty, but it seems they rarely do. When was the last time you were in a manteion, Pig?"

To fill the silence that followed the question, Hound said, "Tansy and I almost never go anymore. We'll have to start if she's pregnant, otherwise there'll be all sorts of trouble about having the baby washed, won't there?"

"Gi'e somethin'. That'll fix h'it."

"I'm not a wealthy man." Hound sounded apologetic. "I wish I were."

And I wish there were a great mountain here, he thought. A great mountain along whose winding pass we had been traveling all morning, so that there could be a sudden turn around a stone outcrop. We would find ourselves looking down at Viron then, Viron spread like a carpet below us, streets running northeast and southwest, and southeast and northwest, with the broad slash of Sun Street cutting across them, east to west, right through the oldest part of the city. That part was built by Pas, like the old pink house, houses and shops built before there were people here to live in them, anyone here to buy or sell. We should have declared them sacred and kept them in repair; we found a hundred things to complain of instead, and let them go one by one, and built new ones we said were better even when they were not.

The apple tree was gone, too. Cut for firewood now that candles cost so much, now that lamp oil is hard to find. Had Pas planted it? He could not have, apple trees live no longer than a man. But now that it was gone, now that it had been cut down and sawn into onecubit logs and burned, would anyone ever plant another?

Aloud he said, "It was the first time I ever heard that song, I believe. It was a new song to me then, and I'm sure I never supposed it would be important to me."

Hound said, "Will you be going to the Juzgado, Horn? You said you wanted to talk to the calde."

"I know I did." A rush of new thoughts.

Hound cleared his throat. "I'm going to go to that inn I told you about. Since I'm going to get a room, I might as well eat there, and they have good food. If you and Pig would like to come, I'd be happy to treat you to a meal. Then you'd know where it was, in case you can't find another place tonight."

Having come to a decision, he shook his head. "That's very kind of you, but I know where it is. I want to go to the Sun Street Quarter first, where I used to live, not to the Juzgado. Unless Viron's changed even more than I anticipate, I'll probably have to wait most of a day before I can get in to see the calde; and if I were to come in the afternoon, I'd probably wait the rest of the day and not get in at all. So I won't go to the Juzgado until morning. What about you, Pig?"

"Wi' yer, bucky. Yer dinna mind me h'askin' h'about een?"

"Of course not. To the Sun Street Quarter?"

"Where yer gang."

"Bird go," Oreb announced. "Go Silk."

There were more houses now, not all empty, until they lined the road. Hound pointed out those that had belonged to friends and acquaintances, recounting some anecdote or describing some eccentricity. "There's the manteion for this quarter. That's where we went when we were living here."

"Thought yer did nae," Pig protested mildly.

"Oh, sometimes. Sometimes we go now with Tansy's mother, and she'd like us to go more often, I know. But in those days, we always went when her mother and father came to visit. Her father was still alive then. I think I told you that it was when he died and left us the shop that we moved back to Endroad." He hesitated. "I suppose it's abandoned now. There can't be many people left. If it's been given up, it will be locked, I'm afraid. Would you like to look inside for a minute if it isn't?"

"Aye," Pig sounded pleased. "Can he look? He canna. Like ter see h'it, though. What h'about yer, bucky?"

"If it won't delay us."

"Oh, it's not big. Not big at all. Just the usual sort of place, I'm sure, but I thought you might be interested."

"No cut," Oreb muttered.

Pig cocked his head. "What's H'oreb h'on h'about?"