“Who is the leader here?” asked one of them.
No one replied, for we were independent of one another in our travel.
The invader said impatiently, after a moment, “No leader? No leader? Very well, all of you, listen. The road must be cleared. A convoy is coming through. Go back to Palerm and wait until tomorrow.”
“But I must be in Agupt by—” the Scribe began.
“Land Bridge is closed today,” said the invader. “Go back to Palerm.”
His voice was calm. The invaders are never peremptory, never overbearing. They have the poise and assurance of those who are secure possessors.
The Scribe shivered, his jowls swinging, and said no more.
Several of the others by the side of the road looked as if they wished to protest. The Sentinel turned away and spat. A man who boldly wore the mark of the shattered guild of Defenders in his cheek clenched his fists and plainly fought back a surge of fury. The Changelings whispered to one another. Bernalt smiled bitterly at me and shrugged.
Go back to Palerm? Waste a day’s march in this heat? For what? For what?
The invader gestured casually, telling us to disperse.
Now it was that Olmayne was unkind to me. In a low voice she said, “Explain to them, Tomis, that you are in the pay of the Procurator of Perris, and they will let the two of us pass.”
Her dark eyes glittered with mockery and contempt.
My shoulders sagged as if she had loaded ten years on me. “Why did you say such a thing?” I asked.
“It’s hot. I’m tired. It’s idiotic of them to send us back to Palerm.”
“I agree. But I can do nothing. Why try to hurt me?”
“Does the truth hurt that much?”
“I am no collaborator, Olmayne.”
She laughed. “You say that so well! But you are, Tomis, you are! You sold them the documents.”
“To save the Prince, your lover,” I reminded her.
“You dealt with the invaders, though. No matter what your motive was, that fact remains.”
“Stop it, Olmayne.”
“Now you give me orders?”
“Olmayne—”
“Go up to them, Tomis. Tell them who you are, make them let us go ahead.”
“The convoys would run us down on the road. In any case I have no influence with invaders. I am not the Procurator’s man.”
“I’ll die before I go back to Palerm!”
“Die, then,” I said wearily, and turned my back on her.
“Traitor! Treacherous old fool! Coward!”
I pretended to ignore her, but I felt the fire of her words. There was no falsehood in them, only malice. I had dealt with the conquerors, I had betrayed the guild that sheltered me, I had violated the code that calls for sullen passivity as our only way of protest for Earth’s defeat. All true; yet it was unfair for her to reproach me with it. I had given no thought to higher matters of patriotism when I broke my trust; I was trying only to save a man to whom I felt bound, a man moreover with whom she was in love. It was loathsome of Olmayne to tax me with treason now, to torment my conscience, merely because of a petty rage at the heat and dust of the road.
But this woman had coldly slain her own husband. Why should she not be malicious in trifles as well?
The invaders had their way; we abandoned the road and straggled back to Palerm, a dismal, sizzling, sleepy town. That evening, as if to console us, five Fliers passing in formation overhead took a fancy to the town, and in the moonless night they came again and again through the sky, three men and two women, ghostly and slender and beautiful. I stood watching them for more than an hour, until my soul itself seemed lifted from me and into the air to join them. Their great shimmering wings scarcely hid the starlight; their pale angular bodies moved in graceful arcs, arms held pressed close to sides, legs together, backs gently curved. The sight of these five stirred my memories of Avluela and left me tingling with troublesome emotions.
The Fliers made their last pass and were gone. The false moons entered the sky soon afterward. I went into our hostelry then, and shortly Olmayne asked admittance to my room.
She looked contrite. She carried a squat octagonal flask of green wine, not a Talyan brew but something from an outworld, no doubt purchased at great price.
“Will you forgive me, Tomis?” she asked. “Here. I know you like these wines.”
“I would rather not have had those words before, and not have the wine now,” I told her.
“My temper grows short in the heat. I’m sorry, Tomis. I said a stupid and tactless thing.”
I forgave her, in hope of a smoother journey thereafter, and we drank most of the wine, and then she went to her own room nearby to sleep. Pilgrims must live chaste lives—not that Olmayne would ever have bedded with such a withered old fossil as I, but the commandments of our adopted guild prevented the question from arising.
For a long while I lay awake beneath a lash of guilt. In her impatience and wrath Olmayne had stung me at my vulnerable place: I was a betrayer of mankind. I wrestled with the issue almost to dawn.
—What had I done?
I had revealed to our conquerors a certain document.
—Did the invaders have a moral right to the document?
It told of the shameful treatment they had had at the hands of our ancestors.
—What, then, was wrong about giving it to them?
One does not aid one’s conquerors even when they are morally superior to one.
—Is a small treason a serious thing?
There are no small treasons.
—Perhaps the complexity of the matter should be investigated. I did not act out of love of the enemy, but to aid a friend.
Nevertheless I collaborated with our foes.
—This obstinate self-laceration smacks of sinful pride.
But I feel my guilt. I drown in shame.
In this unprofitable way I consumed the night. When the day brightened, I rose and looked skyward and begged the Will to help me find redemption in the waters of the house of renewal in Jorslem, at the end of my Pilgrimage. Then I went to awaken Olmayne.
3
Land Bridge was open on this day, and we joined the throng that was crossing over out of Talya into Afreek. It was the second time I had traveled Land Bridge, for the year before—it seemed so much farther in the past—I had come the other way, out of Agupt and bound for Roum.
There are two main routes for Pilgrims from Eyrop to Jorslem. The northern route involves going through the Dark Lands east of Talya, taking the ferry at Stanbool, and skirting the western coast of the continent of Ais to Jorslem. It was the route I would have preferred since, of all the world’s great cities, old Stanbool is the one I have never visited. But Olmayne had been there to do research in the days when she was a Rememberer, and disliked the place; and so we took the southern route—across Land Bridge into Afreek and along the shore of the great Lake Medit, through Agupt and the fringes of the Arban Desert and up to Jorslem.
A true Pilgrim travels only by foot. It was not an idea that had much appeal to Olmayne, and though we walked a great deal, we rode whenever we could. She was shameless in commandeering transportation. On only the second day of our journey she had gotten us a ride from a rich Merchant bound for the coast; the man had no intention of sharing his sumptuous vehicle with anyone, but he could not resist the sensuality of Olmayne’s deep, musical voice, even though it issued from the sexless grillwork of a Pilgrim’s mask.