"Rolery of Wold's Kin."
"Wold's your grandfather?—your father? He's still alive?"
"Wold closes the circle hi the Stone Pounding," she said loftily, trying to assert herself against his air of absolute authority. How could a farborn, a false-man, kinless and beneath law, be so grim and lordly?
"Give him greeting from Jakob Agat Alterra. Tell him that I'll come to Tevar tomorrow to speak to him. Farewell, Rolery." And he put out his hand in the salute of equals so that without thinking she did the same, laying her open palm against his.
Then she turned and hurried up the steep streets and steps, drawing her fur hood up over her head, turning from the few farborns she passed. Why did they stare in one's face so, like corpses or fish? Warm-blooded animals and human beings did not go staring hi one another's eyes that way. She came out of the landward gate with a great sense of relief, and made her quick way up the ridge in the last reddish sunlight, down through the dying woods, and along the path leading to Tevar. As twilight verged into darkness, she saw across the stubble-fields little stars of fire light from the tents encircling the unfinished Winter City on the hill. She hurried on towards warmth and dinner and humankind. But even in the big sister-tent of her Kin, kneeling by the fire and stuffing herself with stew among the womenfolk and children, still she felt a strangeness lingering in her mind. Closing her right hand, she seemed to hold against her palm a handful of darkness, where his touch had been.
CHAPTER TWO: In the Red Tent
"Tats SLOP'S COLD," he growled, pushing it away. Then seeing old Kerry's patient look as she took the bowl to reheat it, he called himself a cross old fool. But none of his wives—he had only one left—none of his daughters, none of the women could cook up a bowl of bhan-meal the way Shakatany had done. What a cook she had been, and young...his last young wife. And she had died, out there in the eastern range, died young while he went on living and living, waiting for the bitter Winter to come.
A girl came by in a leather tunic stamped with the trifoliate mark of his Kin, a granddaughter probably. She looked a little like Shakatany. He spoke to her, though he did not remember her name. "Was it you that came in late last night, kinswoman?"
He recognized the turn of her head and smile. She was the one he teased, the one that was indolent, impudent, sweet-natured, solitary; the child born out of season. What the devil was her name?"
"I bring you a message, Eldest."
"Whose message?"
"He called himself by a big name—Jakat-abat-bolter-ra? I can't remember it all."
"Alterra? That's what the farborns call their chiefs. Where did you see this man?" in'
"It wasn't a man, Eldest, it was a farborn. He sent greetings, and a message that he'll come today to Tevar to speak to the Eldest."
"Did he, now?" said Wold, nodding a little, admiring her effrontery. "And you're his messagebearer?"
"He chanced to speak to me ..."
"Yes, yes. Did you know, kinswoman, that among the Men of Pernmek Range an unwed woman who speaks to a farborn is ... punished?"
"Punished how?"
"Never mind."
"The Pernmek men are a lot of kloob-eaters, and they shave their heads. What do they know about farborns, anyway? They never come to the coast. ... I heard once in some tent that the Eldest of my Kin had a farborn wife. In other days."
"That was true. In other days." The girl waited, and Wold looked back, far back into another time: timepast, the Spring. Colors, fragrances long faded, flowers that had not bloomed for forty moonphases, the almost forgotten sound of a voice ... "She was young. She died young. Before Summer ever came." After a while he added, "Besides, that's not the same as an unwed girl speaking to a farborn. There's a difference, kinswoman."
"Why so?"
Though impertinent, she deserved an answer. "There are several reasons, and some are better than others. This mainly: a farborn takes only one wife, so a true-woman marrying him would bear no sons."
"Why would she not, Eldest?"
"Don't women talk in the sister-tent any more? Are you all so ignorant? Because human and farborn can't conceive together! Did you never hear of that? Either a sterile mating or else miscarriages, misf ormed monsters that don't come to term. My wife, Arilia, who was farborn, died in miscarrying a child. Her people have no rule; their women are like men, they marry whom they like. But among Manland there is law: women lie with human men, marry human men, bear human children!"
She looked a little sick and sorry. Presently, looking off at the scurry and bustle on the walls of the Winter City, she said, "A fine law for women who have men to lie with ...
She looked to be about twenty moonphases old, which meant she was the one born out of season, right in the middle of the Summer Fallow when children were not born. The sons of Spring would by now be twice or three times her age, married, remarried, prolific; the Fall-born were all children yet. But some Spring-born fellow would take her for third or fourth wife; there was no need for her to complain. Perhaps he could arrange a marriage for her, though that depended on her affiliations. "Who is your mother, kinswoman?"
She looked straight at his belt-clasp and said, "Shaka-tany was my mother. Have you forgotten her?"
"No, Rolery," he replied after a little while. "I haven't. Listen now, daughter, where did you speak to this Al-terra? Was his name Agat?"
"That was part of his name."
"So I knew his father and his father's father. He is of the kin of the woman ... the farborn we spoke of. He would be perhaps his sister's son or brother's son."
"Your nephew then. My cousin," said the girl, and gave a sudden laugh. Wold also grinned at the grotesque logic of this affiliation.
"I met him when I went to look at the ocean," she explained, "there on the sands. Before I saw a runner coming from the north. None of the women know. Was there news Is the Southing going to begin?"
"Maybe, maybe," said Wold. He had forgotten her name again. "Run along, child, help your sisters in the fields there," he said, and forgetting her, and the bowl of bhan he had been waiting for, he got up heavily and went round his great red-painted tent to gaze at the swarming workers on the earth-houses and the walls of the Winter City, and beyond them to the north. The northern sky this morning ! was very blue, clear, cold, over bare hills. : Vividly he remembered the life in those peak-roofed : warrens dug into the earth: the huddled bodies of a hun-dred sleepers, the old women waking and lighting the fires that sent heat and smoke into all his pores, the smell of boiling wintergrass, the noise, the stink, the close warmth of winter in those burrows under the frozen ground. And the cold cleanly stillness of the world above, wind-scoured or snow-covered, when he and the other young hunters ranged far from Tevar hunting the snowbirds and korio and the fat wespries that followed the frozen rivers^ down from the remotest north. And over there, right across the valley, from a patch of snowcrop there had risen up the lolling white head of a snowghoul... . And before then, before the snow and ice and white beasts of Winter, there had once before been bright weather like this: a bright day of golden wind and blue sky, cold above the hills. And he, no man, only a brat among the brats and women, looking up at flat white faces, red plumes, capes of queer, feathery grayish fur; voices had barked like beasts in words he did not understand, while the men of his Kin and the Elders of Askatevar had answered in stern voices, bidding the flat-faces go on. And before that there had been a man who came running from the north with the side of his face burnt and bloody, crying,
"The Gaal, the Gaal! They came through our camp at Pekna! ..."
Clearer than any present voice he heard that hoarse shout ring across his lifetime, the sixty moonphases that lay between him and that staring, listening brat, between this bright day and that bright day. Where was Pekna? Lost under the rains, the snows; and the thaws of Spring had washed away the bones of the massacred, the rotted tents, the memory, the name.