“Mount and let’s be off. I’m afraid that we may be too late to warn Embruddock.”
They rode off rapidly, one behind the other, leaving the shade of the grove where the grey Sibornalan knelt in prayer.
The two yelk proceeded steadily, heads held low, eyes staring vacantly forward. When they dropped their scumble, beetles emerged from the ground and rolled the treasure to underground stores, inadvertently planting the seeds of future forests.
Seeing was bad, because of the way the plain rippled with ridge after ridge. More stone monuments dotted the landscapes, ages old, their circular signs eroded by weather or ripicolous lichens. Laintal Ay pressed ahead, alert for trouble, ever turning back to urge Aoz Roon to keep up.
The plain contained its travelling groups, moving in all directions, but he gave them as wide a berth as possible. They passed fleshless corpses to some of which garments still clung; fat birds sat by these memorials to life, and once they sighted a slinking sabre-tongue.
A cold front rose like a shawl behind their shoulders to the north and east. Where the sky remained clear, Freyr and Batalix clung together, their discs inseparable. The yelk had passed the site of Fish Lake, where a cairn had been erected to mark Shay Tal’s miracle in the vanished waters, many winters ago; they were climbing over one of the tiresome ridges, when a wind rose. The world began to grow dark.
Laintal Ay dismounted and stood fondling the muzzle of his yelk. Aoz Roon remained despondently in the saddle.
The eclipse was beginning. Once more, exactly as Vry had predicted, Batalix was taking a phagor bite from the brilliant outline of Freyr. The process was slow and inexorable, and would result in Freyr’s being lost entirely for five and a half hours. Not so many miles away, the kzahhn had his needed sign.
The suns were devouring their own light. A terrible fear took hold of Laintal Ay, freezing his eddre. For a moment stars blazed in the day sky. Then he closed his eyes and clung to the yelk, burying his face in its rusty pelage. The Twenty Blindnesses were upon him, and he cried in his heart to Wutra to win the war in his heavens.
But Aoz Roon looked up to the sky with awe blunting his thin features, and exclaimed, “Now Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk will die!”
Time seemed to cease. Slowly, the brighter light faded behind the duller. The day took on the greyness of a corpse.
Laintal Ay pulled himself from his dread and took Aoz Roon by his skeletal shoulders, searching that familiar but transformed countenance. “What did you say to me then?”
Aoz Roon said dazedly, “I’ll be all right, I’ll be myself again.”
“I asked you what you said.”
“Yes… You know how the stench of them, that milky smell, clings to everything. Their language is the same. It makes everything different. I was with Yhamm-Whrrmar a half air-turn, talking with him. Many things. Things of which my Olonets-speaking intelligence can make no sense.”
“Never mind that. What did you say about Embruddock?”
“It is something that Yhamm-Whrrmar knew would happen as certainly as if it were past, not future. That phagors would destroy Embruddock—”
“I must go on. Follow if you wish. I must return and warn everyone. Oyre—Dathka—”
Aoz Roon grasped his arms with sudden force.
“Wait, Laintal Ay. A moment and I’ll be myself. I had the bone fever. I knocked myself out. Cold nailed my heart.”
“You never made excuses for others. Now you make excuses for yourself.”
Something of the older man’s qualities returned to his face as he stared at Laintal Ay. “You are one of the good men, you bear my mark, I have been your lord. Listen. All I say is what I never thought of till I was on that island half an air-turn. The generations are born and fly their course, then they drop to the world below. There’s no escape from it. Only to have a good word said after all’s over.”
“I’ll speak well of you, but you’re not dead yet, man.”
“The ancipital race knows that their time is done. Better times come for men and women. Sun, flowers, soft things. After we’re forgotten. Till all Hrl-Ichor Yhar’s frame is empty.”
Laintal Ay pushed him away, cursing, not understanding what was said.
“Never mind tomorrow and all that. The world hangs on now. I’m riding to Embruddock.”
He climbed again into the saddle of the yelk and kicked it into action. With the lethargic movements of a man rousing from a dream, Aoz Roon followed suit.
The greyness was settling in thicker, like fermentation. In another hour, Freyr was half-devoured, and the hush became more intense. The two men passed groups petrified by dusk.
Later in their progress, they sighted a man approaching on foot. He was running slowly but steadily, arms and legs pumping. He stopped on top of a ridge and stared at them, tensed to run away. Laintal Ay rested his right hand on his sword handle.
Even through the twilight, there was no mistaking that portly figure, the leonine head with its forked beard dramatically flecked with grey. Laintal Ay called his name and moved his mount forward.
It took Raynil Layan some while to be convinced of Laintal Ay’s identity, still more for him to recognise the skeletal Aoz Roon with no sparkle in his eyes. He came cautiously round the antlers of the yelk to grasp Laintal Ay’s wrist with a damp hand.
“I shall be one with our forefathers if I take another step. You’ve both endured the bone fever and survived. I may not be so lucky. Exertion makes it worse, they say—sexual exertion or otherwise.” He held his chest and panted. “Oldorando’s rotten with pest. I’ve failed to escape in time, fool that I am. That’s what these revolting signs mean in the sky. I’ve sinned—though I’m by no means as bad as you, Aoz Roon. Those religious pilgrims spoke true. It’s the gossies for me.”
He sank to the ground, puffing and holding his head in misery. He rested an elbow on a pack he had been carrying.
“Tell me what news of the city,” Laintal Ay said impatiently.
“Ask me nothing, let me be… Let me die.”
Laintal Ay dismounted and kicked the lord of the mint in the buttocks.
“What of the city—besides the pest?”
Raynil Layan turned his red face upwards. “Enemies within… As if the visitations of the fever were not enough, your worthy friend, the other Lord of the Western Veldt, has been trying to usurp Aoz Roon’s position. I despair of human nature.”
He dipped his hand into a purse hanging by his belt, and brought out some bright gold coins, roons freshly minted at his mint.
“Let me buy your yelk, Laintal Ay. You’re within an hour of home and scarcely need it. But I need it…”
“Give me more news, rot you. What of Dathka, is he dead?”
“Who knows? Probably so by now—I left last night.”
“And the phagor components ahead? How did you get through them—buying your way?”
Raynil Layan gestured with one hand while he tucked his money away with the other. “Plenty of them between us and the city. I had a Madi as a guide, who avoided them. Who can tell what they may be up to, filthy things.” As if struck by a sudden recollection, he added, “Understand that I left, not of course for my own sake, but for the sake of those I had a duty to protect. Others of my party are behind me. We had our hoxneys stolen almost as soon as we set out yesterday, and so our progress—”
Growling like an animal, Laintal Ay seized the other’s coat and dragged him to his feet.
“Others? Others? Who’s with you? Who are you running away from, you bladder? Is Vry there?”
A wry face. “Let me go. She prefers her astronomy, I’m sad to relate. She’s still in the city. Be grateful to me, Laintal Ay, I have rescued friends and indeed relations of yours and Aoz Roon’s. So bestow on me your insufferable yelk…”