The Island Under the Earth (13 page)

The man in the first hall had no particular personal feature which impressed itself on Tabnath Lo’s mind. His manner was dreamy and abstract, and he barely seemed to notice them as they approached. But in his left hand he held a huge and convoluted shell and he had it close to his ear. Said the warder to him, “Repeat what you last heard.”

And he who listened said,
“ ‘Espy out the land …’ ”

“Good. What else?”

And he who listened said, “
‘Allitu … Allitu … Allitu …’
”

The grayhaired warder turned a look of mild triumph and a look of mild scorn and mild amusement on Lo. It was as it was all too obvious for any greater emotion. Lo felt his gaze faltering, his head sinking. The beginnings of a great uncertainty, a great confusion, oppressed him. Had he, after all, said those words? — lately enough for them to be heard here? Was there, after all, anything unreasonable in his perhaps having said them? A spy in any classical sense he certainly was not, but would it not have been logical for him to want to know what the land was like? And yet and even so, in such a case, why should he feel even faintly guilty?

“Nor is that all,” said grayhair; “but it is all for now. — Of
that
, that is.” He uttered one or two raw syllables to his golemmeem, he and they moved forward, Lo and his mute perforce followed. “Or perhaps you have been here before?” the warder said, slightly inclining his head over his shoulder, gazed unwinking, raised his eyebrows, then turned full-face forward once more.

And, indeed, there did seem … did there? … did there not? … something familiar? Or was he yielding to mere suggestion? Lo drew himself up and cast a sharper look about the corridors and the chambers opening onto it, whereof some were shut and some not. His mute seemed no longer in any degree disturbed or perturbed. Surely it was a very various sort of place, now richly and smoothly finished and now rough-hewed and coarse; here adorned with carvings and fixtures and there showing the primal brick and stone. Yet, for all of this diversity, if the place did not seem precisely familiar, yet the impression it gave was in no wise strange.

Now the corridors dipped up, and now they descended. From time to time, though he was not able to pause, he could observe people in the various rooms; and sometimes — though brief, brief was his glance — sometimes they seemed to be engaged in noble activities, and sometimes in things ineffably sly and nasty. The warder stopped and turned and beckoned to his prisoner, and he pressed his lips together a bit and nodded rapidly … half as though in amusement and half as though in warning. Then he gestured for silence and then he beckoned his charges through a door. And although Lo had no idea what was to be found therein, and although he was fully sensible of the element of warning, he felt eager to enter, and he did so as quickly as he could. Well it was that the grayhaired warder put a cautioning hand out then, else Lo would certainly have cried aloud.

It was not clear to him if they were inside the building or outside of it, but, whichever, the natural contours of the ground were still preserved. He looked over a rocky ledge and there in an open space he saw two men and two beasts and once again he had that haunting sense of the familiar and then he saw that the two beasts were one onager and one centaur and next he recognized — and recognized, too, his foreknowledge — the two men as Captain Stag and his bosun. Part inadvertently, and part purposefully enough to whisper: “So you’ve got them, too,” he said.

“Not quite yet,” the warder said, low.

The merchant took a step nearer, rocks gave way beneath his feet, bounded down the side of the hill or clift, he felt his own balance tottering, moved, waved his arms, there was a staff in his hand, it was not a staff, it was a spear, he took a step back onto solid ground and cast the spear with all his might, and took two steps back. He trembled. His guide murmured, “Careful, careful …” but it was not clear in regard to which action his words were meant.

“Oh …” said Lo. “Why …”

He peered carefully over the paved brink, but there was no longer hill or cliff, there was no onager, no centaur, no Stag, no bosun; there was no landscape: only a sort of squared pit, and not very deep. He said, “But …”

The grayhead gave a faintly impatient sigh, and they moved on, through long halls, and came at last to a mighty door. The grayhead said, “Proceed.”

Tabnath Lo said, after pressing upon it, first tentatively, then forcefully, “It is locked.”

“Perhaps you have the key.”

“I? No
… Oh …
”

For he did have the key, and it looked greatly familiar. Again the eagerness possessed him, and without waiting for a further direction he turned it in the lock, and they all entered. It was a sort of mercantile storeroom, and seemed to contain, for all the world, every item or every sort of item which he knew to be contained in his own storerooms in his own warehouse at home. Item for item, bale for bale, box for box, and sack for sack, the contents seemed identical. And yet, with what a difference. How numerous these same articles had appeared when filling his own premises. And how scant they now appeared, lodged within this great chamber which could have contained a hundred times as much, with room to spare besides. Lo said nothing. They moved on.

They moved on into another chamber, which Lo’s key opened with equal ease, and here there were no sacks of barley, no bolts of cloth or bales of stockfish. Here was a hoard of treasure, jewels gleamed, gold glistered on moon-colored bars of silver; rings, necklaces, armills, rich goblets galore. Lo’s astonished voice broke into a sob before it could form one clear word. Here it was, here it all was, so much risked, so little gained, and now all of it, all of it, rapted and ravined away, and brought here to the hidden treasury of others.

“Allitu, Allitu, Allitu,”
mocked the warder.

Tabnath Lo blinked, wiped his blurring eyes. Plunder plundered? No … No, surely not … Were these not the selfsame walls within which he and Stag had mutually hid the plundered riches of the isle? The plundered plunder of the plunderers…. Secreted and secured, walled within walls, deep in the forgotten labyrinth beneath the Old Queen’s Tower, locked inside of ways whose access was locked with double-locks to which only he and Stag had the keys: and there, within the penultimate chamber, where only he and his partner could conjointly go, was the key to the last lock —

The key which he now held within his hand!

Rage took hold of him. He twitched and trembled. Had the grim golem-guards with their massy limbs and sword-pikes not surrounded the grayhaired warder, Lo would have leapt at him. “He has betrayed me … betrayed me …” His voice broke.

“Oh?” —
on a rising note. And — “Does that surprise you?”

“No!” the merchant cried. “It surprises me not at all! I always knew that he would! Always!”

“And rightly,” murmured the warder. “And rightly. What is he up to, wandering around the countryside? Conspiring with centaurs, doing who knows what?”

Tabnath Lo’s anger was transmuted by the other’s note of sympathy into a determination which as yet had no fixed form of purpose. He followed, feeding upon his wrath, enjoying its warmth. He was led through room after room. In one lay more treasure, and he felt that it was his … could be his … ought to be his…. In another lay great store of arms and armor. In others were richly wrought robes of state and office: provosts and syndics and bailees might wear these robes — and, curious and yet significantly, all the robes seemed to be his own size. He desired much to touch all these things, the treasures and the armamentures and the robes — and, in rooms after them, the costly furnitures and the house-trappings worthy of a palace — but all were guarded from his touch by walls of crystal secured with what seemed replicas of the same sort of lock-hole. And, much though he tried, he could not make his key to fit in any.

At last, in a muffled, wearied, panting voice, forgetting that he was a prisoner, he asked, “Who has the key?”

In part quizzically but in more part sorrowfully, the warder replied, “Can it be that you do not know?”

They were at a turning in the corridor now, and, as Lo looked back in anguish and perplexity, he saw, as though reflected in a vast box of mirrors, a familiar enough figure in each and every treasure-room, seen clearly through every open door, an immediately familiar figure with a key in his hand. And the figure simultaneously opened each and every lock in every crystal door in every crystal wall. At once the same strange music began to play, but no longer in the least softly or sweetly: it broke into one great clamor of sound. And broke off —

The figure at the doors turned and looked at him.

“Stag!” he cried.
“Stag! Stag! Stag!”

He clenched his fists and raised his hands and, face convulsed and muscles tensed, had taken but the first step of implicit attack, when quite silently but quite effectively a crystal wall slid from ceiling to floor and blocked his way. The warder said, as though he had said it a many times before and as though he expected to say it a many times more, “Not here. Not here. It cannot be done here. Not yet. Not quite yet. Not here — ”

Beyond the walls of crystal clear the figure that was so many figures continued to look at him, frozen still. “Then where?” cried Lo. “Where? Where?
Where?
”

“Outside — ”

The merchant took a great shuddering breath. “Then let me be outside!”

Treasure chambers and treasures and walls and halls and doors and floors, guardian and golem-guards, site and building and bridge and lake, all in that moment vanished away. And yet somehow seemed to be still with him. And yet he stood alone in the wilderness, and only his mute stood with him.

Trebandóndos and Chevantirósos had been berrying by the burn below the pool, and afterwards they had gone and bathed and frolicked. Now they just lay, each under his own tree, doing nothing, pleasantly. They had been so engaged for some while when a certain vibration, first from the ground, and next along the air, caused each to lift head, then ears.

“Coming very fast,” they agreed.

A certain quality in the steps brought them at once to their feet. “A she! A mare! A young one — ” Eyes gleamed and teeth glistened in beard-thickets. “Aye…. Twill soon be season-time … if tisn’t already.” Chevantirósos preened his shag breast and flanks, Trebandóndos kicked his legs.

And then they saw her running by the burn, all gleaming golden in the sun. Trebandóndos without hesitating beat upon his bosom with his palms and, hueing and hallooing, started off after her. Chevantirósos leaped the hillside and cut them both off. She eyed them both with her golden eyes and she toyed uncertainly with her golden mane: seemed both relieved and fearful.

Trebandóndos reared up and turned upon his fellow, now beating his black breast with his fists. “Get thee gone!” he bellowed. “I followed first! Get th’ gone!”

At once Chevantirósos scooped up a rock. “Tis Ananarusa, maiden-mare — ‘Maiden,’ dost hear me? Un-stopple thy burry lugs, or I’ll mash them and do’t for thee, then may be thou’lt hear!”

The other centaur-stallion whirled about and surveyed her, then turned back. “If I mayn’t mount she without she will, then I’ll persuade she to will,” he declared. “Get thee gone, I say, an’ I’ll court she — ”

But Ananarusa, maiden-mare, cantered somewhat forward and waved her hands, palms down. “Nay, brothers,” she said, her husky voice somewhat trembulous; “this is no place nor time for courtships and such. Me wouldst we were at the High Far Glades, that ye might court and contend for me — soon enough twill be — ”

Trebandóndos growled, flung out his arm. “Then get thine uncoupled cunny thanderwards,” he directed, “an’ I’ll follow thee an’ save it from this one’s twisted pizzle-swipe, fitter to ope an onager than a sweet Sixlimb she like thee, Ananarusa, maid — ”

“Ass-tupper thyself, rogue roan!”

“Soot-eater!”

“Thy sire were a foury and thy dam — ”

Closer and closer had they gotten. Ananarusa stepped between them and seized each one by the beard. “Brothers, brothers, be ye still and hear to me. Me’s come a long way and ha’ run uncommon swift the way, besides, so hear to me, now! Else I’ll mash both your muzzles together! So — Brothers, there are Fourlimbs loose into our land, dostye hear? Me’s lost their count, by one here, by two there, and a three in nother place … it crawls wi’ them, like ants, brothers! My breath’s spent, so tis for ye both to make at all full speed an’ rouse the herd — and yet wait one bit more — a wonder me did see today, for all me tarried not for he: Drogorógos did me see!”

Confusion, anger, alarm — now incredulity between the two males.

“Drogorógos? Drogorógos does be dead!”

“Maid, thee couldn’t know Drogorógos, were he to bite thee in the fetlock — ”

“Twas he, twas he, twas Drogorógos! — with his pelt all silvery and with his scars a-here and a-here and a-here — and his voice all so — ” She forced her own down to a note it could not long carry, and she imitated.

This seemed to strike the males amazed more than the other news. Drogorógos! Still he lived? Drogorógos! Where had he been? The fierce, the canny, the clever and the brave, the mighty, the ancient: Drogorógos domineering, Drogorógos overbearing, Drogorógos —

“Enough for now. Drogorógos alive and Fourlimbs in the land? Follow as thee can, maid Ananarusa, an’ we go to rouse the herd!”

The next thing that Castegor did after delivering to Rary a good day’s supplies of food, gathered at no small labor, from around the mesial vicinity of the house, was to retire with his excuses and ascend to that same small chamber under the eaves of Stonehouse Hobar. He had no wine, but he had his thoughts and he had his view. A bough of the great lilac tree which a wife of Hennan Hobar had planted as a shrub waved close outside; the air in the tiny room was gratefully heavy with its scent. Past the full blossoms he could see for many a league of dark green and light green, and the gray line which marked the gaunt escarpment of a nameless ridge; slate-blue riverine system snaked and forked like veins, and the distance was the color of smoke. He scanned, watched, saw nothing to cause an alarm of either joy or terror or of uncertainty, which is the major portion of man.

Down below the two women had heated water and bathed. Rary let out her breath and drew it in, a slow-then-swift sighing sound, her fingers tracing but not touching the marks on Spahana’s white skin. Then, “It was never him that did this to you….”

“No…. Oh, no….” Her face moved briefly. “It was before. It was not just once.” She took up a dry cloth. She shook her hair. “He has never hurt me,” she said.

Rary had to speak. “You have had children, dear, haven’t you?”

For a moment, Spahana was not only silent, she was immobile, black hair glistening, breasts bare, arm arrested. “I have had a husband,” she said, “and a child. They are dead.” She stood up, held out her arms. Rary helped her into her robe. Spahana went over to a bench by a window. The scene she saw was almost the same as the one Gortecas was seeing. But her thoughts were not his. She watched yellow walls and yellow towers burning on a nearby hill and scanned empty casements for faces she knew she would never see again, heard voices she could only hope never to hear again. Voices, noises, faces, flames. Hands, fists, shackles, whips. Caryavas destroyed. Captivity. One word. How many hells embraced in a single word. Captured, sold, lost, taken, beaten, bartered, gambled. The jealous fury of a purchaser’s wife. Scenes as though graven upon the rim of a platter which turned slowly, slowly, slowly, red, black, yellow, red, image, picture, posture, scene, turn, turn, red —

They had given her a red robe to wear that last time she was sold. Then they had stripped it from her. They had fastened it by cunning ways so that one tug at the hem as she stood on the block had brought it tumbling in a heap at her feet. It was a common trick. Some girls would shriek and stoop and clutch and some would simply step out of the folds and others with a jest and a cackle would kick it into the audience. Spahana had done none of these. She had not even flinched. She was not a girl. It had happened to her times before. Worse by far than this and that had happened to her.

Eager faces, leering faces, bored faces, faces old and young, fresh and jaded, evil, indifferent, there below all and all around her. “Never mind the marks,” the auctioneer said, as he pointed. It would have been useless for him to have ignored them. “They’ll fade. Not her fault, you can see she knows how to behave herself. These things happen … people can’t control themselves … Well. You can all see she’s of a good age and in good shape and holds herself well.” They could all see. They did all see. Clear eyes and bloodshot eyes and cold eyes and hot eyes. Smooth faces and rough faces and bearded faces. Gray beards and black beards, dandy beards and careless beards. Pale cheeks and veined cheeks and ruddy cheeks. Here and there rings glinted on a finger or in an ear. “You don’t often see such a fine woman,” the auctioneer said, even-voiced. No need for a song and a dance; he had a prime article here and one which needed no trickery — the bit with the dress was the only piece of showmanship he bothered with. “Neither free nor bound, you don’t. What’s your name, dear?
‘Spahana’ —
has a pleasant voice, ‘s had at least one child, so not like to shame your manhood by being barren.
Now —
let’s not diddle around with any low bids, very well? This is not a scullion we’re offering, and anybody who tries any jokes, he can kindly stay away from the next sale. What’ll you give, Master Craftsman Drinnid?”

Drinnid stroked his snowy beard and shook his head. “My begetting days are past. I came to find a seamstress. Can be old, can be ugly, long’s she comes cheap and sews a seam.”

There was a slight chuckle, a slight movement in the crowd. Real bidding would begin any moment. Any moment, the pimps with their hair curled and scented would begin to hold up their fingers. Any moment, the satyrs who had tired of the women bought at the last sale would begin to loosen their pouches. Any moment … She had said to herself that she would not look. That she would just stand. To look would be either to hope or to lose hope. She had, between the destruction of her city and this present sale, she had wept and she had begged, had escaped and been caught, had hanged herself and been cut down, had … Nothing mattered (she told herself). She had endured everything, she would endure anything. She would not look.

She looked.

There was nothing in the way he was looking at her. It was not cruel, it was not kind, it was not desirous, it was not rejecting. It was not even, for all the way his eyes slid up and down her naked length and pausing here and there, it was not even with calculated appraisal. He seemed to be in the same decade of age as she was, he had a thick blacktangled beard. His cheeks were ruddy and he had a gold ring in one ear. Their eyes met. The auctioneer said, for his eyes saw everything, “What will
you
give, Captain Stag?”

The man said, “I’ll give my ship.”

The roar of laughter broke upon the tenseness of the moment, ebbed away. The auctioneer said, “We’ll take it.” There was a hush, then a babble, then swift protests here and there. The auctioneer said, “Silver buys gold and gold buys silver, but neither silver nor gold has been able to buy Captain Stag’s boat. Women come and women go, but a boat like that doesn’t come once in a lifetime. Hand up her tiller, Captain Stag.” He had it under his arm, as most ship’s captains had theirs; not that no other tiller could steer her, but it was a symbol, a symbol of ownership and control. He handed it over. The auctioneer stooped and drew up the red robe with his other hand.

“Go down, now, woman,” he said. “She’s yours now,” he said. He turned and gestured. “Bring up the next one,” he said.

Since then he had never said, “You’re mine.” He had not said, “I gave my ship for you.” He hadn’t said, “You’re worth it,” nor had he said, “You aren’t worth it.” Not once had he referred to the ship or to the manner of their coming together. He’d asked her no questions about her past. Nor had she ever said anything like, “Are you sorry?” or “You are not sorry, are you?” or “I am glad that you did.” Indeed, they spoke but little to each other. He gave her orders as he gave the bosun orders, though he gave her fewer; she never refused them; almost never did she speak unless she was spoken to. In her unhaughty pride, in her dignity of carriage, her anticipation of his words and her silent fulfilment of them, in her beauty, her graces, in her mere silent presence in the day times, in the admiration and the often envy of all the world, he seemed (insofar as he seemed anything, insofar as it might be possible to know him) to derive at least sufficient satisfaction to keep him from complaint, to restrain him from abuse, or from excess of tempers. As for what passed between them in the night times, it passed quickly; his needs were simple, his complaints nil.
Women, waves, and lands …

From that moment when the gates of Caryavas were breached and its walls were scaled, there had been for her no times as undemanding as this present time, here in old Stonehouse Hobar. Time had wracked and raved, time had tormented, time had gone taut and tense, time had quivered, had threatened, had hid its face. Now time stood still. Time had not changed the face of the landscape she looked out on. Insofar as it was possible, she was at rest.

“They’ll soon be back,” Rary said. “All of them.”

The other woman did not say anything. She refused to consider anything but the unchanging moment.

And, at that moment, everything changed.