Maia (76 page)

"The men are being told at this very minute. We're due to start in an hour. I'm supposed to be with the king now- on instant call, anyway-but I came here to be with you. No one but you, Maia-believe me, no one in the world- could have made me take a risk like that-my place with

the king, my reputation, future, everything.
Now
do you realize how much I love you?"

She could find no words.

"But whether or not you believe in my love, my darling, there's no two ways about it, I must go now."

Hastily, he got out of bed and began dressing. "Wish me luck! Oh, the daggers! Never mind! Keep the lot!"

Dazedly, hardly knowing what she said, she asked, "But- but how will you reach the river in the dark? The swamps-"

"The river? Why, it's not far from where we are now- over that way." He pointed. "Didn't you know? The woods screen it, else you could almost see it."

"But you said-downstream-"

"Yes, the crossing-place is about three miles downstream from here. There's a track. We've got guides posted along it already. Now kiss me, Maia; dear, darling Maia! I can't tell you how much I love you! I was going to kill ten Beklans: I'll make it twenty for you."

"Oh, Zenka, don't go! You'll be killed, I know it!"

He laughed. " 'Don't go!" What kind of talk's that, Miss Maia? You know I must."

"Oh, I love you, Zenka! I can't bear to let you go! I love you!"

"I love you, too. And this isn't the end; it's only the

beginning, Maia, as far as we're concerned. Believe me,

"we'll meet again in Bekla, when Karnat's taken it; and I'll

marry you, if only you'll have me. Will you? Will you marry

me?"

"Yes-yes! Of course I will! I'll marry you and make you happy forever! I'd go anywhere, do anything for you!" She clung to him, weeping. "If only there wasn't to be the fighting-"

At that moment a distant trumpet sounded. Zen-Kurel, starting, thrust her quickly from his embrace. "O gods, the king! I never dreamt it was so late! The king'U be furious!"

Fumbling at the buckle of his belt, he ran out the door. The sound of his pelting footsteps receded and vanished, merging into the distant tumult of assembly that now reached her ears across the intervening meadows.

Dressed once more, she stood in the doorway, gazing across the meadows faintly lit under the setting half-moon. In one or two houses, beyond the foot of the little slope, lamps were burning, but she could hear no voices and there was no one to be seen. The news, she supposed, had by now spread through Melvda, and almost everyone would be down at the camps, whence the first companies must already be on the point of leaving.

Below her she could see the Star Court and the faint, glinting line of the stream up which her boat had come that morning. The courtyard itself was lit by the smoky, orange light of pine torches, and people-black shapes against the flares-were appearing and disappearing, some walking, some running, but all moving purposefully in the same direction. The camp sites beyond were indistinguishable in a hazy distance of moonlit marsh-mist. Their fires, she thought, must all have been quenched. Even as she gazed she caught sight, far off, of a twinkling spray of sparks which vanished altogether on the instant-a bucket of embers, no doubt, flung into the stream. Yet there was little noise-only that same far-off muted commotion into which the sound of Zen-Kurel's footsteps had been swallowed. Probably the men had been ordered to keep silence as they formed up and marched off.

Those black figures moving against a background of leaping fire-they filled her with unease; with dread, indeed. Where had she seen them before? In the gardens by the Barb? No, not that: no, something worse-worse. Suddenly, with a low cry of horror, she recalled crouching beside PiUan in the undergrowth as the Subans crept forward to attack the Tonildan patrol at the ford.

Now she saw again-dreadfully clearly-the staring eyes of the lad lying on his back beside the fire, the blood oozing through his hooked, clutching fingers: and the other-him, Sphelthon-the boy from Meerzat, crying for his mother. The sodden earth, the butcher smell. It would never leave her now; she was tainted with it forever.

Dizzy and nauseated, she clutched at the doorpost; then, burying her face in her hands, sank down on the step. She thought of the detachment of three hundred Tonildans

downstream of Rallur; and of Karnat's troops crossing in the night, cutting them off from the Beklan army. "The Tonildan outpost downstream-they'll be completely destroyed-cut to pieces-cut to pieces-" Boys from Thet-tit, from Puhra, from Meerzat-

And Zenka, her beautiful lover, who had begged her to marry him-all warmth aad ardor, a very gods' pattern of young manhood-one of the king's personal aides, in the thick of it, carrying the king's messages on the battlefield; what were his chances? She began to sob again, as much with frustration as with grief. She was helpless; a woman. A terrible vision of war-of a world defiled and desolated by separation, fear, wounds, death and bereavement- opened before her inward eye. She beheld an infinity of waste, of mutilation and agony; of sobbing wives, mothers, children, their lives spoiled forever.

She tried to imagine three hundred men lying on the blood-soaked ground, each one crying like Sphelthon. "Destroyed-cut to pieces." How many people-how many women like herself knew what really happened-what it looked like-when men fought and pierced and killed one another?

After a time the intensity of her paroxysm began to subside. She stood up, leaning against the wall inside the doorway. Becoming aware of a voice, she realized that it was her own, emptily repeating aloud, "How many women? How
many
women?"

There came into her mind the memory of Gehta, the girl at the farm; Gehta walking beside her at dusk in the big, smooth-grazed meadow. The scent of the distant pines.

"If King Karnat makes for Bekla, dad's farm's slap in the way. I'm afraid-afraid-dad's farm's slap in the way-"

Passionately, she stood and prayed, arms extended, palms raised.

"If only I could stop it! O Lespa, I'd give
anything
to stop it, to save the Tonildans, to save my Zenka-

Suddenly the goddess spoke in her heart. "Very well-"

Maia turned cold and faint with apprehension. She sank down, crouching on her knees.

"Lespa! Dear goddess, no, not that! That would be death! I can't do that! Not that!"

Afraid-afraid-afraid-the beating of her heart seemed jolting her body.

"Very well," replied the goddess. "Never ask me for anything again."

Going back into the bedroom Maia, having selected the dagger with the slimmest and sharpest blade, cut the coverlet into long strips. These she wound round her legs from ankle to knee, tucking the edges under at the top to hold the binding in place. After this she bound her upper arms in the same way from elbow to armpit. There was one strip left; this she threaded through the sheath of the dagger and then knotted it round her waist like a belt.

Two minutes later, having blown out the lamps and shut the door, she was making her way eastward across the outlying fields of Melvda towards the edge of the distant woodland beyond which lay the Valderra.

At first the way, though rough and awkward, was clear enough. Her eyes adapted quickly to the half-darkness and she was able to keep a more-or-less straight course, looking up every minute or so at the black line of the trees against the night sky. As in the camps that afternoon, she continually came upon little streams and ditches, but now there were no bridges across them, makeshift or otherwise. Stubbornly she clambered down and up, down and up, wading and scrambling until she was coated with mud from head to foot. Twice she passed through herds of cattle, the beasts looming suddenly out of the night, gathering about her inquisitively, breathing hard, plodding after her until at the next dyke she left them behind. Lonely sheds, too, she passed, and a ruined hovel, its bare rafters a lattice of blue-black squares against the night sky, with here and there a dim star twinkling through.

Were those the same woods in front of her, or had she unknowingly altered direction? She stood still, trying to hit upon something-anything-which might help her. Which way had the ditches been flowing? They had so little current that she had not noticed. There was no perceptible wind. The moon was almost set: it had been behind her and still was. There was nothing else to rely on.

She could only go on towards what she must hope were the right woods.

She could not tell how long she had been walking, or how far, but tension and fear had already tired her when suddenly she realized that she had come to the border of the woods-or of some woods, anyway. There was no fence or ditch, and this surprised her-were the cattle, then, free to wander into the forest?-but the edge of the trees was unexpectedly regular; as far as she could see, a more or less straight fine stretching away into the gloom on either hand. Not far to the river, Zenka had said. If that was right, then perhaps she was now quite close to it. She stopped, listening, but could hear no sound like that of the torrent which she had crossed with the Subans. Not knowing what else to do, she pushed her way in among the trees.

At once she realized why there was no need of any ditch or fence to keep back the cattle. The wood itself was the fence. The Subans, when they cleared the ground for their meadows-however long ago that might have been-must have felled as much as they could of the primitive woodland and simply left the rest. What she found herself in was an almost impenetrable thicket. There was no least glimmer of light. The thin, spindly trees stood close, crowded one against another, their branches interlacing; and below the branches lay a mass of thick undergrowth full of creepers, thorns and briars. There was no telling right from left or, if she were to go any distance into this place, forward from back.

Maia began to weep. She did not sob or whimper: these were not tears of lamentation or protest, but the silent weeping of despair. Despite her terror upon setting out, she had at least possessed resolution: she had been determined not to give up. But there could be no finding a way onward through this.

For what seemed a long time she sat hunched on the ground, so still that the minute, nocturnal sounds of the wood resumed about her. As her weeping abated, she became aware of faint rustlings of roosting birds above. Then, with a clutch of fear, she realized that quite close to her some fairly large creature was moving.

She sat motionless, holding her breath. The animal, whatever it was, passed within a few yards of her, crackling its way among the bushes. Then, with unnatural sudden-

ness, the sound vanished. A few moments later it resumed below her, yet somehow altered; in some odd way louder, though more distant than before. After a few moments the explanation came to her. The ground immediately ahead must be sloping downward, and the animal was making its way down some sort of cleft or gully, where such noise as it made would be magnified between the tunneling sides. And surely it could only be towards the river that the wood sloped.

Drawing her dagger, she began to crawl forward on hands and knees, cutting her way foot by foot through the undergrowth. It was desperately slow work, and soon both her hands were bleeding, so that it was all she could do to reach out for another tangle and sever it strand by strand. But she had been right-the ground was indeed falling away in front of her.

She had heard tell of tracts of poisonous growth in forests such as this-ivies and nightshades which inflicted horrible pain and illness upon any creature wandering into them unawares. She could feel and smell leaves and trailing plants all around her as she crawled on, her hands always lower than her knees, her head lower than her body as the descent grew steeper. The whole forest seemed to have fallen silent: her own pain, her own breathing enveloped her. As often as she stopped, she listened with the tension and fear of an animal; and at these moments it seemed as though Shakkarn himself must be following, pit-pat, pit-pat over the fallen leaves.

Now, as though under closed eyelids, she seemed to see, swimming before her, ahead and below, an indistinct, faintly-shining swirl; a glimpse of silvery-gray in ghostly, silent motion, as though the ground itself-or perhaps the air- were actually sliding away. This, she knew, could only be some kind of illusion. Fear must have affected her eyesight. Yet still she went onward and downward, reaching out her arms and clumsily sliding her bruised knees one before the other.

Suddenly she found herself groping in a thick, muddy pool. On each side of her were others. The trees were fewer, bigger, further apart. Above she could make out faint light-a patch of open sky. Cautiously, she stood up. With a kind of slow dissolving of unbelief she grasped- what else could it be?-that she must have reached the

swamp bordering the Valderra. The spectral, silvery flow was the river itself, gliding away towards her right.

Sinking at every step into the swampy, rushy ground, she struggled through the trees. As at the ford, there seemed on this side of the river no distinct bank; only the marsh, interspersed, further out, by channels of flowing water. Now it was growing deeper, the water, and there was no longer any firm ground between the pools merging one into another, becoming the river's edge under the faint starlight.

She was up to her knees. If she tried to wade on she would sink in and stick fast: yet if she tried to swim there would be submerged roots and sunken branches to rip an arm or a thigh. Lying down in the water, she thrust warily forward, sometimes braving a few strokes, hands always in front to feel for danger.

At length she reached a little island overgrown with reeds, and crawled across it. On the further side was disclosed the river itself, open to the sky, broader than she could have imagined, revealing itself at last like an enemy ready and waiting. There was no guessing the depth; and peering, she could make out no trace of the opposite bank.

Never a sound it made; very black where the dim light did not strike the surface, and terrifyingly swift, racing down out of darkness and disappearing into darkness again. Suddenly, out of that darkness, like the sneering taunt of a giant-let me just
show
you, dear!-the river displayed, a few yards out on the current, the body of a goat, swollen and distorted; a sodden, bobbing bundle with bared teeth and pecked-out eyes. Swiftly it was gone, remaining no longer than the river needed to make plain to her what it was.

"Lespa, you sent me here. I've obeyed you, mistress of stars and dreams. Guard and save me now!"

Quickly Maia stripped, retaining only her sandals and the knife-belt round her waist. Her clothes she flung into the water: they floated a moment and were swept away. Then, with a last glance upward towards the clouds covering the stars, she plunged into the Valderra.