Lockridge slipped the tunic over his head. “Was Ola your son?” he asked as softly.
“Yes. The last. Sickness got the rest in their cribs. And this year, when he was no more than seventeen, the lot chose him.”
With a gruesome intuition, Lockridge blurted, “Is he the one on the cross?”
Anger flared back. “Hold your jaw! That was a traitor! He cursed my lady Istar’s lover Pribo, who did no more than rip a fishnet of his!”
“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I told you I was a stranger.”
Her mood changed with intoxicated swiftness. “Ola, now,” she said, “he got to be the Year Man.” She knuckled her eyes. “Goddess forgive me. I know his life is in the land. If only I could forget how he screamed when they burned him.”
Lockridge found a chair, slumped, and looked into nothingness.
“You’re so pale,” the woman said. “Would you care for drink?”
“Christ, yes!” He meant no blasphemy: not of that god.
She poured from a jug into a glass. The wine was rougher than what he had drunk at the palace, but he felt the same peace stealing along his nerves and thought, Sure, they need somethin’ to make them endure.
“Tell me,” he said, “is this Istar your priestess?”
“Why, indeed. She’s the one you should call. Not before tomorrow afternoon, I think. She’ll be out late, hunting, and’ll sleep late, and no matter how important you are, she’s no good person to get out of bed.” The slogg drank from her own glass and tittered. “Into bed, now, well, I hear that’s another matter. The lads aren’t supposed to talk about the springtime rites, but they will, they will.”
“Uh, these Wildrunners. Who are they?”
“What? You must be from afar! They’re the naked ones, the woods dwellers, the wretches that skulk in to steal a chicken or waylay any man unwise enough to go out yonder by himself. I really don’t know why I let you in, when I believed you was a Wildrunner. Unless maybe I’d been sitting here alone remembering Ola and . . . and of course they must be hunted, not just to keep them down but because their life goes into the land . . . yet even so, I sometimes wonder if the Goddess won’t ever make us a better way.”
Oh, yes, Lockridge thought sickly, a better way can be made.
Though not in this age. I see it quite plain. I see that bewildered old workman I knew, two thousand years ago, laid off because he couldn’t handle a cybernetic machine. What do you do with your extra people?
If you’re a Ranger, you dragoon them into a permanent army. If you’re a Warden, you keep them ignorant serfs, with some out-and-out savages as a check, and a religion that—No, there’s the worst of the matter. The Wardens themselves believe.
Do you, Storm?
I’ve got to find out.
Vaguely, he heard the woman say, “Well, sinful though I am, Ola makes me holy till the next Year Man be chosen. He must have guided me to let you in. What else could have?” With quick eagerness: “Stranger, I helped you. In return, might I see the Koriach? My grandmother did once. She came flying across this very land, Her hair black as that storm She times calls Herself, oh, in sixty years they’ve not forgotten! If I might see Her, I would die so happy.”
“What?” Exhaustion and the drug were upon him, but he jolted to wakefulness. “The same? That long ago?”
“Who else? The Goddess doesn’t die.”
A trick of some kind, maybe using the time gates. But Brann had spoken of combating her throughout all history—and so few were fitted to go through the corridors. Their leaders, at least, must have to spend a total of years or decades in every milieu—How many?
The glass fell from Lockridge’s hand. He got up. “I can’t stay here,” he exploded. “I’m going to call for someone to come get me.”
“No, wait, that set only goes to Istar’s keep, you don’t think the likes of me has a direct line to the Goddess, do you? Sit down, you fool.”
Lockridge brushed the woman aside. She sank onto a bed and poured herself another tumblerful. He covered the single call light. The screen came to life with a young man bored, sleepy, and resentful.
“Who are you?” the Warden demanded. “My lady is a-hunting.”
“Your lady can hunt herself into Chaos if she wants,” Lockridge snapped. “You connect me with the Westmark Koriach’s palace.”
The beardless chin dropped. “Are you possessed?”
“Listen, pretty boy, if you don’t jump I’ll nail your hide to the nearest barn, with half of you still inside it. Get me the Warden Hu, the Lady Yuria, any of the court that’s available. Tell them Malcolm Lockridge is back. In the Koriach’s name!”
“You know them? Forgive me! One, one, one minute, I beg you.” The screen blanked.
Lockridge reached for the jug but pulled his hand back. No, he wanted his wits tonight. He stood for a time and raged. Outside, wind gusted under the eaves. The woman watched him, and drank unceasingly.
Hu’s face appeared. “You! We took you for lost!” He showed more astonishment than gladness.
“It’s a long story,” Lockridge cut him off. “Can you trace this all to where I am? All right, come fetch me.” He broke the connection.
The crone was too drunk now to show much of the fear that had come over her. She did shrink from him and mumble, “Lor’, par’n me, I di’n’ know—”
“I still owe you my life,” Lockridge said. “But the Koriach is gone away for a while. I’m sorry.” He couldn’t remain in this hut where a boy’s bed stood so neatly made. He lifted the mother’s hand to his lips and went outside.
The wind streaked around him, with a rattle of dead leaves. The moon was high and seemed shrunken. Immensely far off, he heard the hunters. None of it mattered.
I’ve got to be careful, he thought once. If nothin’ else, I’ve got to get Auri home again.
He didn’t know how long he waited. Half an hour, maybe. Two green-clad men swooped from the dark and saluted him. “Let’s go,” he said.
And over the land they went. Mostly he saw it as one immense night. Here and there lay villages, ringed around the brilliant upwardness of a palace-temple but separated from it and each other by miles of nothing. Often he spied the ankh that was a factory. Sure, he thought, the Wardens live by machines just as much as the Rangers. They only dress the fact up a little more.
I wasn’t meant to see any o’ this. The idea was, I’d go straight to a corridor, if I lived, and get wafted straight to her sanctuary.
It rose before him, even now so splendid that he knew pain to think this must perish. His guides set him down on a terrace where jasmine perfumed an air kept warm and a fountain sang. Hu stood waiting, in a robe that cascaded like a firefall.
“Malcolm!” He seized Lockridge’s shoulders. His enthusiasm did not go deep. “What ever happened? How did you escape, and go that far north, and, and, why, this calls for the biggest festival since She chose Her last avatar in the Westmark.”
“Look,” the American said, “I’m nearly too tired to stand. My mission succeeded and you can have the details later. Right now, how’s Auri?”
“Who? . . . Ah, the Neolithic girl. Asleep, I imagine.”
“Take me to her.”
“Well.” Hu frowned and rubbed his chin. “Why are you so anxious about her?”
“Has she been hurt?” Lockridge shouted.
Hu stepped back. “No. Certainly not. However, you must realise she was distraught on your account. And she’s evidently misunderstood some things she observed. That’s to be expected. Only to be expected. The very reason we had to study someone from her culture so closely. Believe me, we treated her as kindly as possible.”
“I believe you. Take me to her.”
“Can’t she wait? I thought we would give you a stimulant now, and after your basic account is recorded, a celebration—” Hu gave in. “As you wish.”