Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

The sun was well above the hills before there were changes in the harvest line, a girl dropping out because of illness, three coming late to join them after nursing babies—now two more missing might not be noticed by the patrolling Deacons. After all, three fields were being cut besides the main field where the men were working. As the harvesters cut to the edge of the woods that bordered the river, then turned back upon a new row, straggling, one or two stopping to rest, Zephy and Meatha were there one moment and gone the next, slipping through the underbrush, their hearts pounding.

They lay for a long time in the riverbank, and once a Deacon’s horse passed so close they didn’t dare breathe. But if they were discovered here, it would only be a matter of idling, of cooling off. Chastisement, a beating. At last, when they heard no other sound, no breaking branches, no voice calling out, they rose and started up the river.

They kept as well hidden as they could, staying close to the painon trees that lined the fields on their right, then to the cicaba grove, almost overpowered by the honey scent of the cicaba. At the end of the grove, Burgdeeth would end too, and the wild fields begin, the forbidden fields where no one was allowed save those on sanctioned business for Burgdeeth: the meat cart, the ice wagons, the loads of bittleleaf. They could still hear, faintly, the sounds of the threshing, the hush, hush of the scythes and the muttering of women’s voices, the occasional calls or laughter. They walked hunched over instinctively, though the cicaba trees were dense and shielding.

Thorn won’t be there, Zephy thought. He won’t be waiting.

But when they reached the end of the cicaba grove he was there, leaning idly against a tree trunk, a pile of forbidden cicaba gleaming red at his feet. His trousers were rolled to his knees, and his damp clothes clung to him as if he had pulled them on hastily after swimming. “Took you long enough,” he said lightly.

“Temple . . .” Zephy began, and felt herself go weak at his presence.

He grinned, and handed Zephy a cicaba, and one to Meatha. They sat eating the fruit messily, as casual about it—though Zephy and Meatha had never tasted cicaba—as if they had been the Landmaster’s own family. The rind was sharp-tasting, and the fruit inside as sweet as honey. It stained their mouths red so they would be hard put to deny their thievery, were they caught. We won’t be, Zephy thought. Not now, not with Thorn, we won’t.

Across the river, some vetchpea vines had gone wild and grown into tangles that climbed the painon trees and hung down in green curtains. Zephy stared, thinking someone might be watching from there, but Thorn shook his head. “I looked, there’s no one.” And when they went on at last, the hanging vetchpeas vanished quite soon as the river and path turned left.

Burgdeeth and the Landmaster’s fields were behind them now; the wild steep fields and back boulders rose toward the mountain, the river cutting swiftly down to pass them noisily. They were at the foot of the Ring of Fire; Zephy felt the strength of the land around her, felt its weight as it rose above her, the solidity of stone that seemed to have its roots deep in the world’s core. She turned and saw Burgdeeth, so small; then followed Thorn hastily as they slipped from boulder to boulder, staying in shadow. She remembered how stark a small figure, set against the pale grass of the mountain, could appear from below.

Last night at the Singing with the blackness driven back to the edges of the square, with the lamps and candles casting wildly dancing shadows across the stone houses and across the winged statue, with the fiddles and gaylutes and calmets making such a racket, she had felt that nothing could happen to Burgdeeth—or to them. Just as the blackness of night had been destroyed, so the fear of danger, the fear of war, had been put aside as if no harm could come as long as the music lasted. Now in the daylight she felt the reality of their danger once more, the reality of the Kubalese intent.

But such a mood could not last, for the lifting sun sent a clear light onto the mountain, picking out the silver river and, sharply, the black boulders that had been strewn over the land by the eruption of the volcanoes. When she thought of the volcanoes she felt the excitement that she felt in Temple sometimes, as if her thoughts were trying to break free, could almost free themselves. Had the river boiled dry in that terrible erupting heat? If it happened now, this minute, could they escape? She could imagine the lava pouring red and smoking over the little stone huts of Dunoon that perched far above them.

Thorn stared at her. “You’re frightened. Does the mountain do that?”

“Not the mountain. I was thinking of the volcanoes. Why did it happen? Really why?”

“Because there was fire in the mountain,” Thorn said, “a fire that had to come out just as surely as a boiling pot will shake off its lid.”

“But why then, just when Owdneet was attacked?”

He smiled. “Are you asking me if 1 believe in the Cloffi Books of Ere? Or are you asking if you do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m asking.”

He looked at her, and she felt a weakness take her suddenly, a power between them that she could not resist, so that there was nothing real in all the world but Thorn and herself. His eyes darkened, he looked, and touched her hand—and then he turned away.

*

When they reached Dunoon, the stone huts were washed with sun, casting sharp shadows up the mountain. Zephy looked down to the valley, and it was as if she stood on the edge of the sky, so falling away was the land. The countries beyond Cloffi dropped until they merged into the far-off haze; space, infinite space fell away beneath her feet, and the wonder of it held her utterly so she stood staring until Meatha pulled her away, impatient to get on.

There were three orphaned fawns in the village tended by a small boy, and some women were grinding mawzee and wild grains while a young couple laid stone for a house. High behind Dunoon the herds of goats could be seen, and to the left a black cleft between two crags. It was into this cleft that Thorn would guide them. He led them across the village and up beside the river that had grown deeper and narrower as it flowed out from the cleft. The air was cold here. Small fish flashed in the cascading water, and once Meatha stopped and pointed, picking out a gray shape high above on the rocks.

“Wolves. They won’t bother in the daylight,” Thorn said. “There aren’t so many left now, not as there were when my father was young. Then they roamed the mountains in packs of fifty and more.”

“But how do you keep them away?” Meatha, like Zephy, felt a deep fear of the wolves of Dunoon.

“The bucks,” Thorn said. “Did you ever see a big buck goat charge a wolf? With five or six together, a pack doesn’t have a chance. That’s why we have several bucks to a herd. It took a good many generations to breed bucks that would tolerate sharing their does, but it was the only way for protection.”

“You could shut the herds up at night,” Meatha said.

“It was tried. They don’t like it, these goats want the night and the cold air and the moons to make good coats and strong breeding; they wasted away, shut in. That was why my ancestors came to this place in the beginning, because they thought the caves would be good protection and make their flocks safe.”

“It must have been frightening,” Zephy said, “with the volcanoes still smoking and the cinders falling.”

“Yes, they were afraid. The stories show it, the ones that have come down to us. But they came. They didn’t like the Herebian hot on their tails every minute. This was the only place the Herebian wouldn’t go at that time, on the site of the old city. There were fire ogres in the caves then, too. They must have been terrified sometimes—but it was better than the warring tribes.”