Читать книгу The Constant Tower - Carole McDonnell - Страница 17

CHAPTER 11

THE FEAST BETWEEN THE WHEEL CLAN AND THE IDEN WOMEN

Rain was speaking in a Peacock dialect Maharai found easy enough to understand but her discourse was on the war, and Maharai had no interest in war. She only wished to know which of her unmarried sisters would join her and Ktwala in the Wheel Clan.

The beautiful Gidea was already married. Nunu was too old, but she loved Ktwala and might accompany them if Maharai begged very hard. I will cry and pretend to lose my breath, Maharai thought. Then Nunu will leave Grandfather’s side and come with us. Gidea would grieve to be separated from Tolika, but Lan had assured Maharai that the Wheel Clan’s tower science was so great, both longhouses would frequently meet.

Only when the conversation turned to marriage did Maharai tune her ear to listen.

“Why should warriors not share a woman?” Rain defended the Wheel Clan against Gidea’s worry. “Our women are few, our little ones happy and well-fed. Warriors are worthy of wives. They reclaim land from the forest and from wild animals. If it weren’t for our warriors, what would happen to the Wheel Clan?”

Maharai tugged at Rain’s hem. “What if the king tires of my mother?” she asked Rain. “Will he marry someone else he loves better? And what will happen to Mother when he no longer likes her? Will he send her uncovered into the night as Chief Kalli did to his first wife, and his sixth wife, and his twelfth?”

“You know Peacock Clan history well,” Rain said.

“Old Jion taught me.”

“Well, then, know this. Nahas has a good heart. Not a weak heart, mind you, but a good one. He will not harm your mother. I will tell you how good your future father’s heart is. Sometimes he has even allowed non-warriors to marry.”

Maharai didn’t think that was particularly good.

“If the women are past the age of child-bearing, and if a man wants her.” Rain offered Maharai a round wooden platter filled with small red fruits and fermented salted meats.

The platter’s engraving elicited a gasp of delight from Ktwala who immediately praised it.

“Soon, you Iden women will learn this craft also,” Rain said. “You’re our queen now.”

“What happened to the king’s other wives?” Maharai asked. “Did they die in the war? Or did he tire of them and give them to others? And how many did he have and who did he love better? He has two sons and an adopted son but I see no wives.”

“Ruanna was a primary wife,” Rain said. “She belonged to Nahas alone. He loved her greatly. She was Netophah’s mother. Hinis was the wife he shared with his brother. Psal was the child of that bound three.”

“So Psal may not be Nahas’ son?” Ktwala asked. “He might be the son of Nahas’ brother?”

Rain straightened her back. “That hardly matters, but you will understand our ways soon. This is how the matter went. Ruanna could not bear little ones at first. In the meantime, Nahas and his brother had made an alliance with a Macaw clan and both men married Hinis. After Psal’s birth, Ruanna became pregnant with Netophah. After Netophah, Tanti. Then Ruanna died. A terrible, sudden death. Then Nahas’ brother, Psal’s other father, died. Then Nahas’ other brother died. Only Nahas alone of his five brothers survived. Those were terrible times, but with Hinis’ help, Nahas retained his kingship of all the Wheel Clan. Because of Hinis, Nahas rules many of the fertile regions of Odunao. And what chief in our clan or any clan can wrest it out of his hands?”

Maharai frowned. “Mother, don’t marry into this family that has such bad luck.”

“We will bring them better luck,” her mother said. “And enough of your questions.”

“Hinis and four of the king’s children are all dead,” Rain said. “Killed at the beginning of the war.”

“Who do you war against?” Gidea asked. “You speak of the war but you do not tell us who your enemies are.”

“An evil scattered clan,” Satima said.

“That is what you said before,” Gidea responded. “Has this evil clan no name?”

“They have a name but we do not speak it. Among our people, to speak the name of our enemy is to empower them.”

“Ah,” Ktwala said.

But Maharai said, “Old Jion never told me about this particular belief of yours.”

“Did Old Jion know all the wisdom and beliefs of the Wheel Clan?”

“He said he did,” Maharai answered.

“Our Nahas wants peace during the rest of his reign,” Satima said. “A complicated, scheming power-hungry woman would be burdensome. Give him a simple woman with simple joys, one who will sleep at his side and help his mind to rest, and our king is happy.”

“My mother is very simple,” Maharai said, and smiled because her mother’s sweet simplicity had been apparent to the king.

Once more the conversation began to turn to war; Maharai stood up. She tugged at her mother’s braid. “Mother, I wish to see what the men in our longhouse are doing.” True, but she also wanted to see Netophah, whose gentle soft touch continually played in her mind.

Rain answered before Ktwala could. “The people of our clan also believe that when clans become allies, the men of both clans should be left alone to understand each other. The women, also, should learn each other’s ways. This is also the belief of your own clan, is it not?”

“True,” Ktwala agreed. “I remember the old days. Before the elders in our longhouse argued and left us night-tossed. We would visit a Ruined City in the Grassy Plains. There our women would feast with Wheel Clan women. How we would laugh and sing into the night free from the world of men!”

“Those days are long gone.” Rain glanced at Maharai. “Girlie, stay here.”

No, I don’t like this old woman at all. Psal was in one of the corridors. She had heard his voice earlier. Lan had also walked in that direction. She looked at Ouis who sat on his mother’s lap. “Rain, if I can’t go outside, may I explore your longhouse? Since I’ll be living in it?”

Permission given, Maharai strolled toward the corridor on the left. I will explore one corridor, she told herself, then I’ll return to the gathering room, and walk down the other. The smell of pharma and death grew stronger. She entered a large room where warriors on blood-stained sleeping mats stared unblinking at the ceiling. She had seen death before and understood that the warriors were preparing to die so she smiled down at them, and stroked or kissed their foreheads. In the next room, a smaller one, a young warrior lay half-awake, one of his arms missing.

“You have only one arm?” she asked him in the Peacock language.

Surprisingly, he understood her. “Psal removed it.”

She kissed his cheek. “One arm is as good as two if you practice well. Don’t worry.”

He smiled and she rose, bade him goodbye, and continued walking down the passageway.

With the exceptions of Netophah’s and the king’s chamber, the Wheel Clan used painted or embossed curtained screens instead of doors. Behind one of screens, Maharai heard Psal’s voice. Tip-toeing toward it, she peered over it into a room where metals, stones, gems, tools, bottles, clay jars, and parchments cluttered shelves and baskets. Inside were the two studiers she had seen earlier. Psal was lying with his back on a wheeled mat, his dagger on the ground by his side. His trousers were pulled up to his knee and he was rubbing his leg, a strange shriveled thing. The pale girlish studier stood in front of a window looking out at the darkening night. They turned to her as she entered and exchanged surprised glances.

“Girlie, are you lost?” Psal asked in the Peacock language.

“Only little children get lost. Does your leg hurt?”

He picked up his dagger and sheathed it. “Girlie, I understand that you Peacocks are an inquisitive people, but—”

As he struggled to get up, she held her hand over his unruly black curls and ran her fingers through them until he pushed her hand away. The other studier, whose name she couldn’t remember, held an open clay container which smelled like the odor that lingered around Psal.

“We’re brother and sister now,” she said to Psal. “Yes, yes, we are! You and I and Ouis and Netophah. We’re brothers and sisters.”

The boys glanced at each other, and the pale studier approached Psal with the cup.

She examined the pale studier. “I suppose you’re our brother as well, since you’re the king’s adopted son. What did they call you?”

“Ephan.”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Ephan!”

They looked at her in silence, and she suspected they considered her a nuisance. She grabbed the clay cup from Ephan and looked inside it. “Should I rub my brother’s leg with this?”

“It’s Emon bark soup,” Ephan said.

Maharai held the cup before Psal’s face. “Drink it all up. Now!”

Psal’s staff was leaning against a window. She pressed the cup into Psal’s hand then walked toward the staff and lifted it. “Oh, how heavy! And…Peacock markings! It says here…the great Chief Tsbosso gave it to you. I’ve heard of him. Old Jion says he’s our kinsman. Well, actually, our kinsman’s kinsman’s kinsman’s kinsman.” She bent toward him, whispered slyly. “We aren’t supposed to like him, though. Some ancient grudge or other.”

Ephan reached for the walking stick, but instead, she swung it like a club, dashing across the room battling an invisible warrior and overturning the baskets and jars in her path. After an extensive battle with the unseen-yet-now-conquered warrior, she said to Psal, “Old Jion says our warriors take herbs to make them lose their minds when they fight. It must be wonderful to lose one’s mind and fight with all one’s heart, recklessly, cruelly.” Again, she swung the staff. This time much too near Psal’s head. “Is that what that is? A brew to make one cruel? Old Jion says the Wheel Clan has become a victim of its own concoctions. Is that true?”

Psal stood up. Immediately she stood at his side, her arm around his waist. “If you used your staff, you wouldn’t be in such pain. Your staff must carry you, not you it.” She pointed to the concoction in his hand. “I will not move until you drink.”

He quickly finished the drink, then pushed her toward the door. “Leave now.”

She did not leave. She watched as he put on a pair of strange-looking boots. “Where is your hospitality?” she asked. “Show your sister your granaries and your animals. Everything! I wish to see everything.”

Ephan said something in the Wheel Clan tongue and Psal nodded. Maharai walked into the hallway and peeked into the adjoining room. It contained twelve large poles like lamp stands.

“Ah!” she said, “This is what a keening room should look like! Old Jion always told me…but to see the crystals all lit! What new things this day brings!”

“Girlie,” Psal said, rising. “We have.…”

“Ah, yes! I know! You have to join the warriors. Let them wait. The third moon is not yet high. Or will you stay here to keen the women? But Old Jion says Wheel Clan women can keen towers without men.” She grasped his hand tightly, looked into his eyes the way she always did whenever she wanted something from her doting grandfather, smiled. She studied Psal’s face; Ephan’s agitated sighing proved she had caught Psal’s will and could bend it however she wished. I will be able to command Ephan soon enough.

“Yes,” Psal said. “I suppose the moon is not yet high.”

“Tell me about keening, then.”

“Keening involves much.” Psal began explaining keening in so leisurely and intricate manner that Ephan started pacing.

“Ephan,” Maharai said, “Adopted Brother. Don’t be so worried. The feast will wait. There will be boar meat and fruits for all.”

Ephan laughed.

“One has to know how to shape the crystals,” Psal said, “to know their symmetries and counterparts, the angles and positions of the sockets, the carats, how to make different tones, and how to receive music. It isn’t a thing easily learned.”

“I’d like to enter. May I?” Maharai asked, then stepped into the keening room.

Psal followed after her and pointed toward the tower base. “That’s our tower. Inside are the twelve keening trees. The ones outside are spares. For longhouses we encounter. They like to be lit, too. Just to be involved. Sometimes they help us perform very complicated keens.”

“Even from here?”

“Oh, they don’t mind. They’re near to the tower, even in here. They know how cramped it gets under the tower stairs with all those branches, trees, crystals, and parchments inside. But when there’s a council meeting, we return them inside to the base of the tower.”

Ephan was laughing and looking at Psal with his mouth opened.

“Don’t worry”—Maharai walked toward the tower’s base—“I won’t hurt the crystals.”

A sharp whistle sounded outside the keening room window, like that of a large waterfowl. Ephan took Psal’s arm, pulling him. Psal yanked his hand free and led Maharai into the base of the tower. However, as she entered, a little girl dressed very much like herself approached from a small inner room. Maharai extended her hand toward the girl who extended hers also. But unexpectedly, the girl stopped at the tiny doorway. Maharai approached the room, but found she was separated from the girl by a clear impenetrable invisible door. The strange girl looked as perturbed as Maharai felt. It was apparent the tiny little thing was trapped inside.

“Let her out,” Maharai pleaded, and pounded the impenetrable doorway. “Whatever she’s done, she’s sorry to have done it.”

“Look behind it.” Psal pointed at the shiny door.

Maharai looked behind the tiny door. “There is no behind it. Where is she?” She faced the tiny doorway again and peered into it. The trapped girl had returned. “Is it a window to some other place?” she asked.

“It’s a crystal,” Psal said. “A very large one. Polished and placed in a wooden box. When we keen, we often use it to set the lights of the crystals. We must look into the mirrors to see the image of the Greater Light.”

“And the girl?”

“An image of yourself.”

“An image? You’ve trapped my soul?” Suddenly afraid, she ran toward the studiers and attempted to push past them. “Why did you take it?” she yelled.

Psal pushed her toward the trapped soul. As he did this, his own soul also appeared in the crystal, as trapped as she was. He lifted his hand and the Psal inside the stone mimicked his gesture.

Maharai stood there long, staring at the other Maharai and the other Psal. “Why did you trap your soul with mine?” she asked. “Who can free us now?”

“This is no magic,” Ephan called out from where he stood in the hallway. “You’ve seen lakes, have you not? This is what we call a ‘mirror.’ In addition to helping us keen, it shows us how others see us.”

She had seen herself in lakes before; but never this clearly. So this is what I look like? she thought, and smiled at her beauty and how kind her face was. She would have stayed there a very long while except that Ephan grasped her by the hand and led her back into the hallway.

Again, he whispered something in the Wheel Clan language, his gestures even more urgent. Once more, Psal ignored his adopted brother. This time, however, his face was calmer, as if the former anxiety no longer oppressed him.

“This passageway is called the chief’s hallway.” Psal smiled at Ephan as if daring his friend to challenge him. “Here, we have the keening room, the three studier rooms, the chief’s chambers, the chief’s family’s room, the storage rooms, the sick rooms, the pharma rooms, the granaries, the weapons, and on the other side, our horses.” He slapped Ephan playfully on the back and pointed toward the hearth. “The other passageway is called the residential hallway. Warriors and their wives and families sleep down there. Three hundred rooms. Usually two warriors and a woman for each room. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Depending on rescues. The children sleep in their own rooms. Do you want to see that hallway as well?”

They walked past the gathering room to the other side of the longhouse into the residential hallway, passing room after room, of differing sizes, containing one, two, or more beds. They walked past the squatting places with their wooden bottomless toilets to the hall’s end where some eighteen women lived, separated into five rooms. Most appeared malformed, bent and frail, or sickly. One or two had bruised faces as if they had been beaten. Some had pale skin with pale hair like Ephan’s. The women lay in beds or sat on chairs, or on the floor staring out past Maharai with sunken and morose eyes. Three held small children. One child—a pale boy with pale white hair—approached Psal with his head bowed. Maharai listened as Psal whispered something in the Wheel Clan language which elicited a smile from the boy who returned to the woman’s lap.

“Who are these?” Maharai asked Psal.

“Comfort women.”

“Whom do they comfort?”

“Men,” he said. “Boys.”

She sucked at her teeth, trying to understand. “And must they comfort? What if they don’t want to comfort anyone?”

“I suppose those who have brothers in our longhouse—who would avenge them—could refuse to comfort.”

“Who comforts them?” she asked.

“Rangi comforts them,” Ephan said. “Tomah comforts them.”

“I don’t know what Rangi or Tomah are,” she said, “but the one who looks normal—that pale beautiful one—men must love being comforted by her?”

“That one is Lyrenna,” Psal said. “She has an ugly disposition. But yes, they do like her body. That little one with her is her son.”

Ktwala’s voice echoed through the longhouse calling out to Maharai.

Maharai asked Psal, and looked down the corridor at her mother. “Old Jion says your people don’t like those whom the Creator badly-made. He says you allow the badly-made girls to live but kill the badly-made boys. Still, look…you’re badly-made and you’re alive!” Her mother called again and Maharai rolled her eyes. “Mother probably thinks I’m shaming her somewhere. Be safe, my brothers.”

She ran toward the gathering room where Gidea was weeping about losing both her daughter and Ktwala at once.

“The separation has occurred too suddenly,” Gidea was saying. “I did not wake this morning expecting to be bereft of my daughter. And, although you Wheel Clan sisters assure us that both towers will meet frequently, I must be sure Lan and Deyn are not cruel husbands who will beat my daughter. Therefore, we Iden Peacock women will return to our longhouse. Tomorrow we will show you Iden hospitality. Then we will schedule the courtship intervals. The Iden men must examine the Wheel Clan warriors properly.”

Gidea stopped speaking momentarily as Ephan and Psal walked through the gathering room into the night. Satima took the opportunity to speak.

“This is a rare night, Sister. A night when we women can laugh and sport among ourselves without listening to men talk of war. And courtship rituals during a time of war? My Iden sisters, this is not practical.”

Ktwala tried to make peace. “Gidea,” she said, “let the men fend for themselves tonight and see women’s worth. Perhaps Rain will agree to the courtship interval. Even in a time of war. And yet I do believe your daughter’s husbands are as honorable as my Nahas.”

But Gidea rose from her seat, dragged Ouis from Ktwala’s lap. “My sister, you’re letting your heart—and that other thing—rule your mind.” She turned to Satima and Rain. “I only speak my heart. Don’t be insulted. What mother would not worry for her daughter?”

So, the Iden women rose as one—Ktwala apologizing profusely for Gidea’s behavior—and forsook the exotic Wheel Clan dainties and fermented meats. They bade the Wheel Clan women goodbye. “Who knows if we shall see each other again?”

And—despite Rain’s protestations—went out into the night.