“Mmmm,” Qualt said. But it was uncertain if he meant he agreed with her, or merely that he’d heard her. “Later — ” Shadows around them became smaller and darker, larger and paler — “I and some of the others went to look at the Myetran who’d fallen among the trees. He’d taken down a lot of branches — and we put his body in a wagon.” Always the shadows moved. “As soon as I came back, I ordered the corral to be opened; and I told the soldiers inside to go — it was the corral I was in charge of; I mean, what were we going to do with them? And sullenly they went.”
“Mmmm,” Rimgia said now, though it was as hard to tell what she meant as it had been when Qualt had said it. Then she said, because it was really why she’d come looking for him in his yard anyway: “Qualt, I like thee — I like thee very much. Dost thou like me?”
“Yes, I…Yes…yes!” he blurted, stepping away from her to look at her wonderingly, then moving back to hold her tightly in his one arm — even while his other suddenly felt astonishingly empty.
Rimgia looked up at the flying creatures who crossed and parted, and reversed, and lowered, and rose. “Maybe they’re not like us,” she said. “Maybe they’re different.”
Qualt said, very carefully: “They are brave and wonderful and generous. They saved our village… He did so many things for me — for us. He was my friend — he’s still my friend. But because they do things that make me so afraid of their difference, that, perhaps, is why we might still be afraid of them a little. But come inside now, Rimgia…” He turned with her and pushed back his door hanging. “There’s something I must say to thee, must ask thee…”
“Whatever is it?” and she stepped within.
Gargula stayed on in the field. Several times, sensing the hour, Tenuk’s mule had turned to start back; but Gargula pulled him steady, sometimes with a jerk, staying late for much the reason he had started late.
The first night on the common where Rimgia had lost her father, Gargula had seen an older sister whom he loathed burned till, screaming, she’d fallen dead among so many others screaming — and watched an aunt whom he’d loved far more than his mother trampled by her own friends. Like Rahm, Gargula had spent the night in the fetid and fouled cellar of the council house, that, as a boy, he had helped build. On his release he’d brought dead Tenuk’s mule to the field, a man — the only man to go to the fields that day — looking for something. But because the monotonous furrows would not yield it up, he might well have gone on plowing into darkness unto dawn.
What halted him, however, was — well, it was music. But it was also thunder. A house-sized hammer struck among metal mountains might have produced those notes. Then, a voice joined them, but a voice like the sky itself opening up and starting to sing — or was it singing?
The mule, then Gargula, stopped.
Before the phrase ended, incomprehensible within its own roar, it collapsed into a laugh — but a laugh as if the whole earth had become woman and was laughing. Finally, there was a voice, with words actually recognizable:
OH, DEAR — NO, I SOUND awful, RAHM!
I’M AFRAID THAT WASN’T A GOOD IDEA AT ALL!
JUST WAIT A MINUTE, WILL YOU?
LET ME SWITCH THIS THING —
Gargula stood, the field a-hum about him.
Then, for whatever reason (not like a man who’d been given what he needed, but like one whom a certain shock had informed that what he needed was not to be found where he was looking), he unhooked the plow and, as the mule twitched a slate colored ear, turned with the animal toward town.
To the west the sky was a wall of indigo, behind mountains whose peaks were crumpled foils, silver and copper. To the east above the tree’s back fringe, salmons were layered with purples, separated by streaks the cold color of flame — before which burned and billowed golden clouds. Above in the vault, coming together in yellowish haze, insect tiny, Winged Ones turned, one after the other, to fly toward the rocks.
Gargula walked Tenuk’s mule to the path.
As they came out under oak leaves, he heard the visiting singer’s voice, harmonizing with her harp-notes. A group had gathered at the well — a number of the village young people who were friends. There was Rimgia, and Abrid, and Qualt. Though he could not see her, certainly Naä sat at their center, on the well wall, singing, playing.
As he looked among the listeners, Gargula saw that Rahm’s black hair was now braided down his back — the way you were supposed to wear it after you’d come in from a wander. Things, Gargula reflected, were, finally, settling into the ordinary.
And a bit of the weight at the back of his tongue, that had made it too heavy for speech all day, he finally and surprisingly swallowed. (Across the common a line of elders, in their woven robes, walked toward the council building’s plank door for that evening’s special meeting.) Gargula blinked in the road, at the branches leaning from the underbrush — so that, only when the Myetran officer was three steps away, sling buttoned down over his gun hilt at his leggings’ black waist and puma pelt fastened around black shoulders, did Gargula see him.
Without a nod, the lieutenant walked by man and mule, to the south-east, the sun’s fire on the puma’s lids and bared teeth, on the bronze hair and brown cheek, making him squint — so that Gargula, who turned to watch Kire as he passed, did not even catch the color of his eyes.
RUINS
LIGHTNING cracked a whip on the dark, scarring it with light.
Clikit ran for the opening, ducked, fell, and landed in dust. Outside, rain began with heavy drops, fast and full. He shook his head, kneeled back, and brushed pale hair from his forehead. Taut, poised, he tried to sense odors and breezes the way, he fancied, an animal might.
There was the smell of wet dirt.
The air was hot and still.
Blinking, he rubbed rough hands over his cheeks, pulling them away when the pain in his upper jaw above that cracked back tooth shot through his head. A faint light came around corners. Clikit kneaded one ragged shoulder. Dimly he could see a broken column and smashed plaster.
Behind him, the summer torrent roared.
He stood, trying to shake off fear, and walked forward. Over the roar came a clap like breaking stone. He crouched, tendons pulling at the backs of his knees. Stone kept crumbling. Beneath the ball of his foot he could feel sand and tiny pebbles — he had lost one sandal hours ago. He stepped again and felt the flooring beneath his bare foot become tile. The strap on his other sandal was almost worn through. He knew he would not have it long — unless he stopped to break the leather at the weak spot and retie it. Clikit reached the wall and peered around cautiously for light.
In a broken frame above, a blue window let in Tyrian radiance. The luminous panes were held with strips of lead that outlined a screaming crow.
Clikit tensed. But over the fear he smiled. So, he had taken refuge in one of the ruined temples of Kirke, eastern god of Myetra. Well, at least he was traveling in the right direction. It was Myetra he had set out for, uncountable days, if not weeks, ago.
In a corner the ceiling had fallen. Water filmed the wall, with lime streaks at the edge. A puddle spread the tile, building up, spilling a hand’s breadth, building again, inching through blue light. As he looked down at the expanding reflection of the ruined ceiling, he pondered the light’s origin, for — save the lightning — it was black outside.