Читать книгу The Constant Tower - Carole McDonnell - Страница 10

CHAPTER 4

THE VOCA

Persistent sand fleas and the sun’s heat assaulted the boys as they journeyed past ancient stone archways depicting male athletes engaging in sexual acts, past the ruins of brothels where the tiny bones of aborted children littered the long-dried up sewers, past the faded chipped wreckages of fertility temples. In their younger days, the studiers had wondered at the stability and constancy of those ancient edifices. Older now, they understood no more than they did when they traveled with the Wintersea Master. They now contented themselves with the words he always used when faced with some incomprehensible planetary cipher: There are more things in the universe that can be understood with even my great mind, boys.

They traveled until the stone road lost itself to the desert. All the while they collected such things that interested only studiers. About halfway in their journey, they saw vultures circling over sparse bush. There, amid scavenging ravens, a woman’s rotting body lay clothed in a blue tunic—the common dress of Falconer women. The woman had the features of different clans. Maggots swarmed in her ripped-open womb. Psal looked about. There was no boy corpse anywhere nearby, but that meant little. A living newborn boy would’ve been borne away by the night. A girl would be nursed in the arms of the Voca chief.

“Is it…the Voca?” Netophah asked, hiding behind Psal.

“Of course, the Voca! No other clan rips children from their mothers’ wombs.” Psal turned about, his back to the body. “I sincerely hope you will not force the Principles on me and make me bury this woman.”

Ephan grimaced. The thought had probably been in his mind. He surveyed the sandy desert, at the sparse plants. “The Voca tower song still echoes throughout the region.”

“Where?” Netophah’s fingers dug into Psal’s arm. “Where? I don’t hear it.”

“You’re not a studier,” Ephan said. “Listen. It has a sweetness to it. The sound of honey or very sweet nectar. Can you hear it now?”

“Honey has a sound?” Netophah sniffed at the air.

Psal rolled his eyes. “You’re no use at all. Sniff with your ears, not with your nose!”

Netophah wriggled his nose. “I don’t hear anything.” He looked backward toward the leagues of red sand that lay behind them. “Maybe we should go back.”

“Farewell.” Ephan poked at something in the body’s open cavity with a small twig. “Who knows when we will meet each other again?”

“Alone?”

“You’re Nahas’ son, Netophah. The truce will protect you.” Ephan knelt beside the body. “Storm, come and see. She’s a beautiful specimen.” He gathered several maggots into a clay jar. “I’m finished. Storm, you can turn around now.” His head bowed, he spoke a prayer they had learned from a studier in the Waymaker clan.

The vestige of age-old superstitions, Psal thought but did not rebuke his friend.

They continued on and reached the abandoned longhouse when the sun was high in the sky. The tower had materialized inside a large boulder—an error indicating a damaged tower. The right side of its longhouse had been shattered by the rock on which it had floundered.

The original builders of the towers—thought to be men, gods, or spirits, depending which clan lore one believed—often reveled in creative fancies, making towers of various shapes and of brick, colored stones, metals, or wood, often painted or decorated with precious gems. Seventy men standing side-by-side could encircle this tower, and its height was like that of an evergreen. It was round like most, and its watchtower at the topmost spire perfectly squared. The rampart was extended along the roof—a sign that a large Waymaker clan had once inhabited it.

Psal shaded his eyes. “The tower’s song is faint, but it’s reparable.”

The longhouse door swung back on its broken hinges at Ephan’s touch and bricks in the nearby wall crumbled under his hand. On the wall opposite the door, three long parallel lines—markings of the Lake Waymaker Clan—flowed like a winding river past drawings of flowers, beasts, seeds and berries. The warm peppery scent of Naro spice permeated everything.

Ephan shook the dust from his hand. “If Nahas makes you a chief, our stewards could make this a longhouse suitable for you. Claim it for your own.”

Psal entered the gathering room with his dagger drawn. No squawk of bird or lowing of animal echoed through the longhouse. Yet.…“Do you hear that?” he asked Ephan. “The tower pulses, as if faint life…are you sure no one’s within?” He leaned his staff against a nearby wall and called out in the primary Waymaker dialect. “Is anyone here?”

No answer. He tried again, using a Peacock dialect. Again, no answer. Once more he spoke. This time in the Wheel Clan language, the last of the three universal languages. Still no answer. He whispered to Ephan. “Someone hides within. Do you hear?”

Dagger drawn, Ephan walked down the left-hand hall toward the sleeping quarters, while Psal limped toward the storerooms, Netophah behind him.

“Come quickly!” Ephan called out.

Psal and Netophah raced to the sleeping rooms. Ephan held a skeletal boy—no more than three years—in his arms. A slightly older girl in a hemp tunic stained with excrement clung to Ephan’s arm. Their eyes were slanted like those of the Waymaker Clan, Netophah’s people.

“Is no mother with them?” Psal sheathed his dagger.

“None. Another child lies in the back. Near death.” Psal began walking in that direction but Ephan stopped him. “It’s best not to see that one.”

Psal paused, then nodded.

“These little ones are too young to care for themselves,” Ephan continued. “And the tower’s broken. Another night’s keen and the longhouse will be completely destroyed. It’ll end up in the middle of an ocean or on the edge of a cliff probably.”

“And there’s the Voca,” Netophah added.

All three looked at each other in silence. Yes, there was the Voca.

“Father won’t take the boy,” Psal said.

“They’re from a Waymaker clan,” Netophah said, eyeing the boy with pity in his voice and eyes. “As a peace child from a Waymaker Clan, I can plead with Father to take—”

Psal opened his studier’s pouch. “We’ll call Lan.” He limped toward the longhouse’s keening room. “I’ll ask him to bring a cart to carry these foundlings. The clans are all gathered. Someone will surely take them.”

The keening room contained only one upright keening tree, the useless one common to all keening rooms, the one superstitiously called The Greater Light. The main keening tree, the Lesser Light, had fallen. Crystals were broken, wrongly aligned, or in the wrong settings. But Psal and Ephan were worthy studiers. With the few tools they carried, they managed—moving crystals here, aligning others there, chipping there—to make the tower chirp, even if they could not make it sing.

* * * *

Lan arrived, dragging a wheeled cart filled with bowls of Naro juice and roasted Yisin grain.

“You took a long time coming.” Psal carefully settled the girl into the larger cart, propping her head upon a blanket.

“It’s a long way!” Lan snapped. “And Nahas bartered away all our horses! To the Grassrope clan. Filthy pigs! You’re lucky I came.” He peered at the sun. “I will never forgive you for leaving me at Nahas’ mercy. Dannal got engrossed in discussing failing towers with some Waymaker chief and wandered off! I was left with Seagen to negotiate truces and pledges. And Seagen, of course, refused to do anything that ‘reeked of studier duty.’ His words, not mine. Oh, what an infernal language that Peacock tongue is! Side-teeth clicks, front teeth clicks, throat clicks! Back teeth click! My jaws still ache! And Nahas—who knows the Great Languages well enough—seemed determined to—” He stopped speaking and stared sadly at the listless babe Psal carried. “Do you think he’ll live?”

“He might.”

Lan took grain between his thumb and middle finger and placed it gently in the older boy’s mouth but he gave the children mildly despairing looks. “Tsbosso wanted you for his daughter. Moonlight. Not the one you’ve been pining for.”

“Moonlight?” Psal ground his teeth. Hadn’t he told Tsbosso to marry Moonlight to Netophah instead? Hadn’t he begged Tsbosso to leave him out of the truce talks?

“But the price the old man asked for her!” Lan said. “Some of our tower science! Nahas turned him down, of course. Even for such a beauty, it’s too dangerous a price to pay.”

Ephan tossed away the dead rodents on their cart and placed the older boy on it. As for the babe, Psal could not leave it, dying though it was. They placed it in its sister’s hands.

Lan picked up Psal’s staff and thrust it into the firstborn’s hand. “Firstborn, how the old man pleaded for you! With tears! As if all the world depended on it. Gaal, too, championed your cause, declaring that a marriage between both clans might lead to a joining of both clans. Nahas seemed almost at the point of relenting, but then…” His words trailed off as he glared at Netophah.

“But then?” Psal pressed.

“Nahas wanted Moonlight to marry that nature-blessed one instead. Well, he doesn’t trust you, does he?”

“As a child, I slept in Chief Tsbosso’s longhouse. I hunted with him. Yet I have never betrayed Nahas. But this king of yours insists on distrusting me.”

Psal remained silent as they began their return journey, musing on the mixed motives of the wily old chief and on his father’s wariness. Then, he felt Netophah’s hand on his arm.

“Look, Firstborn!” Netophah shouted.

Emerging in the red desert—in the middle of the day under the daymoon: a longhouse was materializing along their path. Such a thing did not happen. Many studiers—or warriors under an enemy’s blast—had tried to keen longhouses before the third moon rose. They had failed, the towers balking at a daytime keen. But there it was, a one-story longhouse with the typical Falconer “wings” on either side, keening in broad daylight.

Lan dropped the handle of the cart he was pulling. “A Falconer longhouse joined to a tower which carries Peacock Clan memories. Other echoes as well. Do I hear correctly?”

“The small windows in the wing, and the tower at the leftmost front of the longhouse, declare it to be a Voca modification of a Falconer longhouse,” Ephan said, “but the tower’s song also has Peacock rhythms running through it.”

“Which is it, then? Voca or Falconer?” Psal asked Ephan. “Or perhaps a Peacock Clan?”

Ephan grasped his dagger. “If any in the Falconer clan had learned the daytime keen, they would have told us! And I know of no other—” He edged closer. “If the Peacock Clans have discovered the daykeen, the Wheel Clan will soon bow to their strength!”

The shimmering longhouse, a pulsating half-visible wisp of brick and wood, barred them from the feasters in the far distance. The keen progressed steadily and Psal approached awestruck. The longhouse fully materialized at last, and when its main entrance door opened, a slender woman appeared. Psal could not tell whether age or illness stooped her, but she walked slowly, like a warrior wounded from many battles. Her pale tan trousers matched her tunic, but a yellow scarf covered her gray hair, which flowed down her back like a snowy rivulet. She seemed to be of mixed Waymaker-Grassrope parentage, and she descended the external steps of her longhouse with majestic but determined slowness. Five young women with features from various clans followed her, their lances or swords raised high.

Psal limped toward the chief. The Voca Wheel Clan truce will hold, but what of these children? She shall not have them.

When he stood before her, the Voca chief placed her long whalebone sword against his left thigh. “Where are you taking my children?”

“Great Chief, I am Psal. Firstborn son of Nahas and a studier for the Wheel Clan. We found these children alone. I ask therefore of your gracious mercies that—”

“Indeed? The son of King Nahas?” The Voca Chief eyed the Waymaker clan children in the same way a victim of theft would gaze on her rediscovered stolen property. “I’m Chief Tamira. We’ve keened for these young ones, bringing their longhouse here. Why do you take what is ours?”

Lan drew his knife. “No doubt it was you who deprived them of their mother. Why then should we reward.…”

The warrior nearest Chief Tamira lunged forward and stood between Lan and her chief. “One more step, boy,” she said. “And you die.”

Chief Tamira touched the warrior’s shoulder and the girl lowered her lance. “We claim the girl, Warrior. Only the girl.”

Netophah stepped in front of the small cart he pulled. “We won’t let you have her!”

The Voca chief tossed him a disdainful glance and spoke to Psal. “Prince Psal, your return journey is long and the place of male feasting is far away. We are many. If we killed you, who would know?”

“Chief Tamira, you would not kill us or break the truce,” Psal answered. “And the children are ours. We found them. They now are Wheel Clan property.”

The chief reached for the girl but the child clutched at Netophah’s arm.

“She does not wish to be separated from her brothers,” Ephan said.

Netophah added. “If you want recompense, Nahas will give you much for them. I give you my solemn word.”

The Voca Chief ignored him, walking toward Ephan. “You must be Ephan, the one they call ‘Cloud?’ Nahas’ Little Favorite? I have heard ‘Storm and Cloud always go together.’” She glanced at Lan and Netophah. “And who are these?”

“The older is Lan, a warrior of our clan,” Ephan said. “The other is Netophah, heir of all the Wheel Clans.”

Chief Tamira’s eyes sparkled, her voice rippled with laughter. “So I am in the presence of a future king? Is that why you spoke so boldly to a Voca chief, Little Arrogant One?” She turned to Psal. “And you have accepted this loss of your birth-right, Prince Psal?”

“I consider myself honored to be a studier.”

“Indeed? Does the Wheel Clan still say ‘Women, towers, studiers—all frail things that attempt to manipulate?’”

Psal frowned. “I have heard it said.”

“I’m sure you have. Well, perhaps little Netophah’s reign will be more enlightened.” She gestured for Psal to walk with her. “Studier-Firstborn, the truce between Nahas’ clan and ours forbids our taking your young ones. It says nothing about young ones from other clans. Or does Nahas still want to extend his dominion and care to all clans, regardless of their desires?”

“Great Chief Tamira,” Ephan called. She turned and smiled so lovingly at him he stammered. “I know it is within the hearts of women to have mercy. Be merciful to us this once and do not separate the children. Let us keep them.”

“Nahas will refuse the boy, Little Favorite.”

“True, Great Chief, but Tsbosso or one of the other chiefs will accept them.”

“King’s Little Favorite.” She walked to Ephan. When she stood before him, she stroked his cheek so gently she might have been his mother. “Good words. Respectful words. But if you don’t give us the girl, the boy will be killed. Now. Bleeding at your feet.” She whistled toward her longhouse. From within it came seventy or more young women with daggers drawn. “Would you rather he die than give the girl to your enemy?”

“But you are not our enemy,” Netophah said. “You’re our ally now.”

But Ephan shook his head. “It has to be done.” He lifted the weeping girl and carried her to the arms of the Voca chief, who gently bore her away.

The girl stretched her hands toward her brothers. Her screams echoed through the empty desert. The Voca chief whispered in her ear but her words did not staunch the child’s tears.

“Who knows when we will meet each other again?” Tamira said, and entered her longhouse. Its doors closed behind her.

As the Voca Chief’s dwelling slowly dissolved, the Wheel Clan boys fell silent. Their silence lasted until they reached the place of scorched bones, where the skeletons of children sacrificed centuries before were like black dust on the red sand. There Netophah started laughing, clapping his hands.

“Certainly, we need our hearts lifted as well,” Lan said. “Not that anything you say is ever worth hearing.”

Netophah gasped in laughter, catching his breath. “First, Psal said…he said, it was an honor to be a studier. An honor. I almost laughed.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“Because Father has taught me not to show my heart easily, of course. I’m the prince of all the Wheel Clans, after all.”

Lan groaned. “And the second?”

“The Voca chief called Ephan ‘Little Favorite.’” Netophah’s face slyly hinted at adult secrets, leered. “I’ve heard our warriors call him that. But to think…even the Voca believe Ephan is Father’s lover.”

Lan pushed Netophah to the ground. “To think Nahas took away the Firstborn’s honor and gave it to an idiot like you!”

Netophah picked himself up and brushed sand from his tunic. “You asked me why I laughed. I told you. So, why hit me? And some of our warriors say Father treats Ephan with a special favor. Even for an adopted son.”

Once again, Lan pushed Netophah to the ground. “He is the king’s adopted son, Netophah. True, adopting foundlings and orphans are common in our clan, but the king’s heart seems as bound to Ephan as he is to you. Therefore, be silent, Birthright-stealer!”

Netophah clambered up and shoved Lan, his head buried in Lan’s chest, his arms flailing.

“Don’t push me!” he shouted. “I’m the future king of this clan.”

That declaration only succeeded in getting him knocked down again, this time with the additional ignominy of being pressed into the sand by Lan’s right boot. But Ephan lifted him to his feet.

“When I was a boy,” Ephan said, “I met the Voca Queen. I was very young, much younger than Tanti. It was some days before Psal and I were sent off to study with our Master. Nahas and his captains stood at my side, the queen opposite us. I remember she had the illness of our clan, my own illness, and had covered herself in a shawl to protect her skin from the sun. I don’t remember what they spoke of. I was a child and they spoke of adult matters, cryptically, as adults often do. But she looked kindly on me and I sensed she liked me. I sensed it then and I sense it now. Perhaps because I seemed so sickly and so like a little girl. Although I have not seen her since that day, whenever I chance to happen upon a Voca chief, they call me ‘Nahas’ Little Prince’ or ‘Nahas’ Favorite.’ As for being Nahas’ favorite, Nahas loves women…as far as I know. As far as we all know. Nor am I his lover. But ignorant fools are always presumptuous, and you—well-favored, blessed by nature birth-right stealer who thinks he’s the Creator’s gift to the world—why should someone as perfect as you not mock as you do?”

Tears welled in Netophah’s gray-green eyes; he was young then and he hadn’t the skill to argue with a studier, especially one he had angered. The rebuke silenced him for the remainder of the journey.

At the feast, Psal brought the foundling boys to Tsbosso, who received the children as a gift from his gods. But Tsbosso had something else in mind. “Lie with my daughter until the night comes.” He lifted a friendly warning finger to Psal. “Only, do not go too far. I know you understand what I mean.”

“But I don’t want—”

“My boy, a new love will push an old one away. When I told Moonlight she could have her sister’s former sweetheart, she was troubled. You can understand why. They’re sisters. But I told her it was all for the best.”

Psal shrugged, frowned, said nothing.

The white oval clay daubed on Moonlight’s face contrasted with her dark brown skin, glowing golden in the twilight. Her hemp skirt dyed in bloodroot swung at her waist like tall grasses. A jasper stone necklace hung between her bare breasts like the moon between twin towers.

She should not be called ‘Moonlight,’ She is the beauty of the sunset.

“I loved one who does not love me,” she said as they lay in the red desert sand. “He was a young chieftain from the Waymaker Clan. Today he told me he desires another. My heart is breaking under the hammer of this news. I fear I will remain unloved all my life.”

“It cannot be that you could be unloved!” Psal wiped her tears away. “All men in all the clans know of your beauty and your goodness.”

Her smile was so sad that Psal’s heart went out to her. So they played together, within Tsbosso’s prescribed bounds. He fondled her breasts and she caressed him, but his heart remained with his old sweetheart Cassia. All the while, the girl begged him to marry her, to leave his clan immediately and join hers. Such utter despair in her voice and eyes. If Psal had not feared to hurt Cassia, he would have taken her and married into Tsbosso’s clan.

As the third moon grew brighter, the feasting and dancing drew to its close. Psal rose from the ground, closed his trousers, and tightened his belt and tunic.

“Life is many days,” he told her, “and the Wheel Clan has a long unforgiving memory. Moreover, it’s too soon for me to marry. I still love your sister. In the days to come I will grow to love you. Do not weep.”

“What if the days bring you someone else to love?” She wrung her hands.

“I am not one whom many wish to marry,” Psal said. “And I have a faithful, very uncomplicated heart. I love those who love me. I will wait for you. But we must wait until Nahas relents, and even after we marry, I cannot live with your father in your longhouse. When the daymoon eclipses—it’s not too far away, the lunar eclipse!—Cassia will have her baby in her arms. She’ll have grown to love her husband by then, and her heart will not grieve to see us together.”

Moonlight adjusted her clothing. “No, no, Firstborn, you must love me now and live among us now.”

He lifted her and glanced at her stomach. “Or has your lover left you with a child?”

The girl looked at him, eyes wide. She shook her head vehemently.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to impugn your virtue. I only…it’s just that…you seem so desperate to be married to me. It’s quite new to me to be so wanted.”

“I’m a virgin still.”

“That doesn’t matter to me.” He hugged her waist and began leading her toward Tsbosso’s longhouse. “Even if you were pregnant, I would’ve taken the unborn child as my own.”

She clutched his arm. “It’s only that I’m so unloved.”

Have I seen her emotion correctly? Ah, me! I’ve become like Nahas. Does she not seem to wish that she had lied about a pregnancy? Psal kissed her forehead. “You have one who loves you now. One who will love you. Only, don’t be so desperate and don’t marry the next warrior who asks for you.” He led Moonlight to her father and said to the old man, “I’ll be faithful to her until we meet.”

Her fingers tightened, painful around his. “Marry me now, Psallo. Please! Your father will forgive it in time.”

“He will not,” Psal said, and the girl left weeping. Left alone, Psal spoke to the old man.

“Great Chief,” he said, “have no fear. I will prove my worth to Father and—give me six months! One hundred and fifty days!—you will have this alliance with our clan. But, Great Chief, forgive me for adding sorrow to sorrow, but there is a thing I must tell you.”

The old man’s mind seemed elsewhere. “Nothing you say could bring me sorrow, my boy.”

“Chief Tsbosso, today, as we returned from the abandoned tower, I met a chief of the Voca clan.”

“The Voca?” Worry and surprise mixed on Tsbosso’s face. “Here? But our towers didn’t hear them this morning. Nor have I seen—”

“They came at midday. They left at midday.”

“Left? What do you mean ‘left?’”

“Have you heard anomalies when tracking towers? Towers seeming to be there, then…not being there at all.”

“Yes. In the past few months several…but—”

“The Voca have discovered how to keen by day.”

Amazement now. “In the daytime? The daykeen?”

“I saw it with my own eyes. I wonder. Do you think the daymoon figures in their—”

“How clever those bitter women are! They have attacked us forty or more times since the Great Eclipse. Legions of Voca warriors attacking our exploratory longhouses! Our men killed. Our women given the choice of living with them or losing their girl children. Few of our people have escaped. And now this!”

“Indeed, Chief. I have often thought you should form an alliance with them.”

The chief waved a dismissive hand. “We make no truces with women.”

Psal sighed. He looked past the old man’s left shoulder into the darkness. Was Cassia still about? All he saw were mats and tables being gathered up and carried into longhouses, women from different clans calling small children indoors, Wheel Clan warriors from different longhouses speaking to the Wheel Clan king. “I’ve forgotten to congratulate you on the future birth of your grand-child. May it be a boy.”

“It shall be.”

“In the meantime, I will ask my mother to beg Nahas to let me marry Moonlight. Moonlight is wise. She will know how to befriend Mother as they feast together. No doubt, this time next year, I shall be your son and peace will rule between our peoples.” Nevertheless, he offered the traditional farewell common to all clans. “Who knows if we shall see each other again?”

Tsbosso turned his gaze away, toward the longhouse the Peacock women would be using to meet the Wheel Clan women. “Perhaps our children will meet.”

“Or, perhaps my children will be your grandchildren,” Psal answered, laughing.

Psal hurried to the Hinis tower, dodging the scurrying Wheel clan women. His mother stood among an assortment of blankets, carts, and foods prepared for the traditional two-day Feasts of Women. Psal limped toward her.

“I’m busy, Psal,” she said, before he could speak.

“I know, Mother. Hinis. Queen Hinis. I will not keep you long. I only wanted to.…”

Her dark brown eyes dared him to continue. A pile of blankets teetered. She gestured to a young girl, a foundling, who looked shyly up at Psal until Hinis pushed both of them aside.

“Psal,” his mother snapped, “why are you always underfoot? And where are those sisters of yours? Why are they alw—”

“My sisters are well, Mother.” He had seen them earlier. He clung to her as she hastened to the door. “It’s only…Mother…if I were Tsbosso’s son-in-law, Mother, Queen Hinis…Mother.”

Hinis stood in the entrance, twining the end of her braids absent-mindedly and craning her neck as she peered into the darkness. “Psal, the girl you wanted is married. Pregnant too. And this Moonlight which Tsbosso so wanted to give you…I find her too subtle for you. Is your heart so weak that you love Cassia at one moment then tumble to Moonlight the next?”

Psal looked down at her feet. “Moonlight and I don’t love each other yet. But…but…love will come. But, but, but, now, we wish to comfort each other.”

“No doubt there is much in your life you need to be comforted about.” She called to his brothers playing outside with their father. “Go and find your sisters.” Then turned to Psal. “How gullible you are to trust that deceitful old man!”

“Nevertheless, Mother, consider helping me. With a woman of my own, I wouldn’t be entirely underfoot. To shame you, I mean. And the skirmishes with the Peacock Clan would stop, Mother. Truly, Mother, they would.”

The queen stared at him, said nothing.

His sisters soon appeared with his brothers. They dragged a heavily-laden wheeled cart, the girls pushing it from behind, the boys pulling it in front. Queen Hinis gestured them toward the open door. “That the daughters of King Nahas should go about the longhouses begging for sweets! Have you no sense of decorum?”

The girls kissed Psal and dragged their sweet-loaded carts past him. He stepped down from the longhouse and Hinis closed the door behind her.