XIX

ON Ahroe’s ship, the Peshtak, Red, also stared at the city ruins, unbelieving. He was fuming and cursing under his breath. “You killed them. You killed them all. You are the rottenest gang of sanctimonious sludge pits. Worse than the Innaniganis. You’re the foul swill of a thousand fishgutting slaughterhouses. You grew from the ooze like snakes. You—” He cried out and buried his face in his fists.

“What should we have done?”

“All my cousins. My uncle.”

“All their city. Most of their guardsmen.”

“We’ll pay you for this. Every drop of blood. Every shred of flesh.”

“We’ve already paid a good deal. Now, Guardcaptain Ahroe wants to see you.”

Red struggled and spat. Finally he had to be gagged and shoved into the guardcaptain’s room, where Ahroe sat at a long table. Red was placed on a stool opposite her.

“Red,” she began. “We’re going to let you go—back to your people. Now will you talk? Can we take that gag off?”

The Peshtak stared at her. Then he went limp. The guardsmen took off the gag. “Go home?” he said. “Almost everybody I know is here, under your bullgutted rock pile.”

“We regret that. As much for us as for you. We want you to tell your people we can cure the Peshtak plague, and if they come in peace, we will do it. We’ll trade with you. We’ll live at peace with you. But if you come raiding again—even one small raid on the Tall Grass Sentani—we’ll gather all the people and wipe you out. Finish you. The Shumai have agreed. So have the Koorb Sentani. We’ll talk to the Tall Grass people. You’ve seen our weapons. You know what they can do.”

“You can do nothing, you dung heap. You fermenting maggot garden.”

Ahroe laughed. “I’ll have to tell Stel that one. Fermenting maggot garden. I wish you’d stop cursing and think.”

Red did stop. He looked at the floor a long time. Then he said, “I’d never make it through the Sentani alone, anyway.”

“If you can hide a thousand men, you can surely hide one. Besides, we’ll give you a letter of safe-conduct. I think they’d honor it.”

“A letter? Safe-conduct?” The Peshtak could hardly believe what Ahroe was saying. But after they talked for some time, he calmed and began to see the opportunities offered. His people could decide about the invasion afterward. If they really could be freed from the terrible disease, what else would matter? He finally agreed to carry the message.

“One more thing,” Ahroe said. “Destroy all your hogs and wait at least a decade before you get any more. All of them:”

“Destroy the hogs?”

“We think they are carrying the disease. Not alone. We think they are a strongly contributing cause. We don’t really know. We think so.”

Red pondered. “The hogs. We thought about that. It didn’t seem reasonable.”

At last Red was prepared to go. “What’s your real name, Red?” Ahroe asked. “You’ve never told us.”

“Osel.”

“Osel. Well, good-bye, Osel. If I embrace you, will you harm me?”

“Not if he wants to live,” the youngest guardsman said.

“Please, Garet,” Ahroe said.

“I won’t harm you,” Osel muttered.

Ahroe put her arms around him and placed her cheek against his. “May Aven go with you, protect you, and bring success to your journey,” she said. “May you always prosper, and if you return, may we be friends.”

Osel pulled away and looked at her. “You see,” she added, “it isn’t we who are enemies. It’s the concept of hostility. There is no reason why the invaders and the Threerivers people couldn’t have been having a feast together right now—except for their concepts. It helps to separate the whole unsuccessful complex of Peshtak ideas from the people. I reject the Peshtak ideas, but not the people. Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to combat the people who push these absurd ideas.” She remained wary and unsmiling, however.

“Good-bye, then, guardcaptain,” Osel said, turning away. “We’ll see what happens.”

“You’re welcome back here anytime—without an army.”

“Yes.” Osel looked back at her, a swirl of emotions welling up in him. Then he turned toward the shore.

Ahroe, too, had mixed feelings as she watched him being rowed ashore. “I hope this works out, Garet. I hope.”

“There doesn’t seem a better idea.”

“Now,” she said, sighing. “I supposed I’d better see Udge, the ex-Protector.”

Udge was brought by the same boat that had taken Osel ashore. She puffed up the ladder and over the side with difficulty.

“Very inconvenient,” she said. “Very inconvenient. I should think you could have greeted me ashore.”

“You need to understand right now, Udge, that you are not in command of anything anymore. You have no constituency, unless the survivors of Threerivers are foolish enough to reelect you. You need to understand, too, that Pelbarigan will oppose it and will offer no further aid if they do choose you again.”

Udge’s mouth fell open. “I—I will see you reported. I will talk to Sagan.”

“Sagan’s last message from Threerivers was a blot of blood on a scrap of paper brought by a message bird. If you wish to talk with her, we can do it now with the radio. We even have a voice system now, though the dome people say they will be able to do much better with it.”

“Face to face will be good enough,” Udge said, turning her head.

“Provided Sagan sees fit to receive you. You ought to know that you will never be a family head in Pelbarigan. You have been tentatively assigned a place working in the laundry.”

“In the laundry!” Udge shrieked.

“The laundryworkers objected, of course, but we prevailed on them.”

“The laundryworkers objected!”

“We had to promise the men you would be giving them no orders. They—”

“You promised the men!” Udge took her hair in her hands and shook her head back and forth.

“We nearly had a mutiny. Some said they would rather go north to the new colony, but we told them that you would have to scrub in silence if you were allowed to come at all.”

Udge opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“You must understand that all of Pelbarigan really holds you responsible for destroying this beautiful city. It would still be here, full of life and happiness, if you weren’t so rigid.”

“Put me ashore. Right now. I don’t have to listen to any of this.”

“Very well. But no one seems in a mood to take care of you—perhaps a few old-fashioned women. But they are of little use to themselves. However, we will see what the people decide. What they decide will be honored, of course.” Ahroe rose and urged Udge out onto the deck.

At that point a longhorn sounded from the lookout on the mast. “Boats, Guardcaptain Ahroe,” he shouted down. Quite a flock of them.”

“Peshtak?”

“Can’t tell. A strange group. Someone’s waving.” He squinted through his long glass. “What? How did Brudoer get down there? No. It isn’t Brudoer.”

Ahroe cried out and scrambled up the rope ladder. “It must be the twin, Gamwyn,” she yelled. “Blow the horn again.” As Ahroe looked through the glass, a guardsman blew the longhorn of greeting.

Ahroe saw a dark-skinned man pick up a white thing, and faintly they heard a hollow horn sound in return. “Good Aven,” she said. “I’ll be a snakeskin in the mud. It is Gamwyn. What a strange group. There must be over a hundred people.” She leaned back and let out a long, quavering Shumai yell that startled everyone used to the modest and ordered guardcaptain. “They’ll be hungry. What do we have to eat Any game? We need a wild bull,” she called down.

“We have one, guardcaptain.”

“Roast it up, then. Radioman, tell Pelbarigan. Cooks, we’ll have a feast on shore. Aven, look at that crowd.”

When Gamwyn got within range of a megaphone, Ahroe had a big guardsman boom out, “DID YOU GET THE SHELL?” They saw Gamwyn wave a cloth sack in the air. The guardsmen on the ship cheered.

Brudoer was helped, limping and pale, up on the deck to see his brother coming. “Bring Misque,” he said. “Misque should see.”

The reunion took place on shore. The twins held each other in a long, laughing embrace. Gamwyn was rangy and sunburnt, Brudoer pale from his months inside. Gamwyn was astonished to see the city in ruins, and when the whole group from the south sat around eating and listening, they all grew more and more silent with amazement as the story unfolded.

Gamwyn was worried about his brother, but Brudoer assured him that he would be all right soon enough. Misque was silent and preoccupied, just waking from a long sleep below decks.

“Not glad to see me, Misque?” Gamwyn asked.

“Oh. Yes. Amazed. Now there are two of you, when I—I thought there would be none. Now that I’ve recovered some, I’m worried, Gam. It’s Jaiyan and Jamin. A few of us still have them. West of here. You have to save them.”

Gamwyn instantly became serious. Misque explained everything to him. He spoke to Ahroe. She frowned and stared off at the sky, her mouth straight. She was suspicious of Misque still. But then she summoned some of the guardsmen, and Misque explained everything to one side of the gathering. As the sun went down, thirty-two well-armed guardsmen rowed across the river. Soon the boats returned without them.

That evening, a feast was held, and all heard the crackling greetings from Sagan on the radio, welcoming the strangers to Pelbar country. They finally settled down for the night with many questions open. What would they all do now? Could they settle here? Should they move on?

Brudoer and Gamwyn had much to tell each other. Artess stayed close to Gamwyn all the time, especially when Misque was present, but the Peshtak girl seemed not to notice. Her arm still pained her sharply. Her conscience lay in fragments she could not seem to piece together. Ahroe suggested she go to Pelbarigan long enough to mend because there was no shelter left at Threerivers. Brudoer, though, saw no need for her to go. “We can all live here in the caves,” he said, “until we decide what to do.”

“What caves?” Ahroe asked.

“Behind the city. In the rock. Craydor’s people lived in them when they carved out the city. I’m sure we can move enough rock to get in there. I think I know just where to start.”

 

As dawn slowly sifted its first light down on the prairie west of the Heart the next morning, one of the six Peshtak guarding the two Sentani sighed and rolled over. “How long we going to have to keep these two pigs alive?”

“Just until we are sure Misque kept her agreement.”

“What’s holding them. It’s a long time now.”

“We’ll find out soon enough. Where’s Aroth? Still on guard? Why didn’t he wake me?” Both were instantly awake and on their feet, looking around.

“Drop the swords,” a voice called waking the other two off-watch Peshtak. One lay still on the ground, but the second started to crawl off.

“Stop right there,” a voice called from another direction.

The Peshtak sat up to flick an arrow at the voice, but a longbow arrow pierced him instantly and he pitched forward, snapping the shaft.

“Drop your swords,” the voice called again. “We have your two friends tied.”

The three Peshtak looked at each other, then at their dead comrade, then lay down their swords.

An unarmed Pelbar guardsman came into view. “You understand that you will die as soon as he did if you move to pick up one of those swords.”

One of the Peshtak spat.

“Stand over there,” the guardsman said. Neither moved. “Do it now or we will kill you.” They moved. Two more guardsmen appeared from the brush and picked up the Peshtak swords, thrusting them into their quivers.

“You,” the guardsman said to the other Peshtak. “Stand up.” The man rolled upright and rushed the guardsman, who jumped aside as another arrow thwacked into the man’s leg. He went down, writhing. “All right,” the guardsman said, “You’ll be something for the others to carry.”

“Loathsome pile of unwashed hide scrapings!” one of them said, spitting.

“Come on,” the guardsman replied. “At least let me be washed hide scrapings. Now, We’ll take our Sentani friends, and your weapons, and leave you with your dead man and your wounded. You’re free to go home. You might as well know. Annon and all your men are dead. Misque alone is alive.”

“Liar,” one man shouted.

“Come and see. The whole city fell with them in it.”

The Peshtak were bewildered. The rest of the guardsmen appeared now, with Jaiyan and Jamin freed. The two Sentani were worn and famished, and rubbed their, wrists where their bonds had cut into them. The Peshtak stood around with no one paying obvious attention to them. They were not sure what to do.

“One other thing,” the same guardsman said. “We can cure the Peshtak plague now. If you have it, you might want to come with us.”

“Liiiiaaaar,” one shouted again.

The guardsman laughed. “We cured Osel and sent him home. He’s been a prisoner at Pelbarigan. Know him? We told him to tell your people that any more raids will bring their entire destruction. We’ll all go together and do it. Are you hungry? We have some bull meat here. All cooked and dried.”

The nonchalance of the Pelbar guardsmen unnerved the Peshtak, though they knew they were being watched. As the party set out for the river, the Peshtak came along, bringing the wounded man on a litter. Late in the day, when they came through the last brakes and woods, they saw the city of Threerivers now a pile of rubble, the pyramid thrusting up through it. The two ships and the crowd of small boats on the east bank bewildered them.

“You might as well come with us,” the guardsman said to the Peshtak, as several boats pushed off from the east bank in answer to their horn. “We’ll look after your wounded man.”

The Peshtak were not genuinely sure that they were free to go, thinking the offer might be some trick to allow the Pelbar to kill them as escaping prisoners. They got into the boats with the others, one to a boat. On the east bank they were amazed to find a crowd of Pelbar, Tusco, and Atherers together.

Gamwyn greeted the two giant Sentani with a shout and led them to Misque, who lay under a tree with Brudoer. “We want to rebuild, Jaiyan. You can stay with us. You can build your organ. We can all use it. Really. You’re just in time to hear our evening songs. You can imagine how the organ might help them.”

“Gamwyn, I—” Jaiyan began. “I don’t know what …” The big Sentani fell silent as a choir of guardsmen and Threerivers people sang a hymn to Aven, the restorer, the one true builder, their voices swelling in a harmony that brought a blank amazement to Jaiyan’s face. Several songs later, he was wholly enraptured and decided to stay with the Pelbar

After the singing, the travelers from the south all gathered around Bival, and Samme made an announcement. “We wish to make a presentation. Gamwyn is now ready to make restitution to you. It took him awhile, and like most boys, he did a lot of other things along the way, but—well, we will let him finish.”

Grinning, Gamwyn presented Bival with a rough cloth bag—the same one the old hermit had tied in the tree during the hurricane. Inside, Bival found not only the shell of the Broad Tower but the shell models for the other towers that now lay in ruins nearby. She was overcome with emotion and sank to the ground crying, covering her face with her hands. Warret put his arms around her.

“For her, we thank you. We thank you all,” he said. “She will thank you herself in a while.”

The evening was chill and dry, with a slight breeze. There was much to organize, but somehow the entire array of people felt relaxed and relieved—even the old Three-rivers women, to whom the loss of the city in which they had spent all their lives was a great wrench. The tumbled heap of the city lay south of the riverside field where they bedded down for the night, with a circle of fires around them and guardsmen from Pelbarigan on watch. On one of the ships, someone played a pollute, though it was barely audible on shore over the loud calls of the fall insects.

Morning brought a heavy river mist, shrouding the two ships save the mast tops. With the new day courses of action became clearer. The old Threerivers people would go to Pelbarigan, unless they wanted to stay and work to rebuild and refashion Threerivers’ society. The Tusco artisans wanted to stay, as did most of the younger Threerivers people. The Atherers wanted to press on to Pelbarigan to learn what they could about the Lost One. Jaiyan and Jamin would also stay. Misque would not leave Brudoer and the two Sentani, and Artess had attached herself to Gamwyn. For his part, Gamwyn knew already he never wanted to be very far away from her.

Surprisingly enough, the five remaining Peshtak who had been guarding Jaiyan and Jamin also decided to stay. That way, they said, if the disease appeared, cure could be near. They had been talking with Misque, and after their initial anger at her betrayals, as they saw them, they calmed. It was a long trip home, and trouble waited at the end of it. At least here was a possibility, a new society, just forming, a relaxation from danger.

Brudoer described the location of the tunnel leading to the caves, and with some effort, they dug to it behind the city ruins. The boy explained to Bival that all Craydor’s plans lay there in a stone chest, dry and well preserved.

It was decided to leave the ruined city as it was, as a monument to the past and a grave for the Peshtak. They also feared the consequences of digging into it with so many infested dead in it. Initially, they would use only stone from the two walls that fell outward.

On the second afternoon, one of the ships from Pelbarigan got under way with many of those leaving. The next morning saw an opening made from the caves directly outside, something Craydor’s people had never done. That evening, all those who were staying gathered in the field north of the old ruin to decide about a new government. Initially, they agreed to use the Pelbar representative system, with some changes. All the peoples there would have a part. Males would have an equal voice. The family representational system would be abandoned. The Protector would be elected by all. No decisions would be made except by the entire council. The Protector would have a regular term of office. Ownership would not be communal but individual. They would reconvene in the spring to forge more carefully a basic document of government.

Udge was present, but her vehement statements simply swung others more insistently toward a looser system of government. “Appalling. Utterly appalling. Disorderly and anarchical,” she muttered repeatedly.

“Will you be quiet?” Dardan hissed. “Do you want to go to Pelbarigan and work in a laundry?”

“Unthinkable. Unthinkable.”

When Bival was appointed to design the new settlement, she immediately asked if an open form, of individual houses, like the Shumai farm town west of Northwall, would be acceptable. No one objected. She pointed out that a central citadel could be built for safety if need be, but they didn’t have to live in it all the time.

The old Ardena had been killed by the Peshtak, and Bival openly wished she had the advice of her former antagonist. “She knew that the design of anything begins with the life that is to be lived in it,” Bival remarked. “Craydor knew that, too, but she was forced by her times into choices that would become outgrown. No doubt the choices we make here will eventually also be outgrown. We have to make them easy to alter.”

When Samme and his Southocean friends floated downstream four weeks later, all wearing Pelbar winter coats, they could already see the rough outlines of a settlement beginning to take shape.

Samme found the chicken workers especially happy with the chance to direct and profit from their own employment. Freedom from the watchful eyes of the Nicfad and the Committee had left the Tusco artisans baffled at first, and they were only beginning to learn to direct their own choices.

The Peshtak had become the chief fishermen of the settlement, and they seemed to reconcile themselves to their unexpected lot fairly quickly. One of them, Ustral, was very young—scarcely older than Gamwyn and Brudoer. He was merged quickly into the household of Pion and Rotag. Jamin also spent most of his time there, under Misque’s watchful eye, since his father had gone to Pelbarigan to build an organ there. No one could haul rock like the giant, simpleminded Sentani, and he was content to do that.

Udge had refused to leave the Broad Tower, and to humor her, since she had returned Brudoer’s bracelet intact, they had dragged and rolled the great structure down onto the level ground, where she lived alone. She had already found that no one would care for her as a drone, so she had reverted to the occupation of her youth, becoming a potter to the settlement.

One day, when Dardan stopped in to tell Udge she was marrying one of the Tusco artisans, the old Protector, after initial shock, resumed wedging her wet clay in silence. “Well, I never would have thought it,” she remarked, digging the heels of her hands into the plastic substance. “I never would have thought a lot of things. I wish … I wish a society could be shaped as perfectly as this. But there are lumps in it. And air bubbles. It’ll never make a perfect bowl.”

“And you’ll never make a living pot,” her old friend said. “By the way, one of the older Tusco might be just perfect for you. He isn’t used to managing his own life. He—” Dardan stopped when she saw Udge’s face, then simply said, “He wouldn’t be a very good bowl, though.”

“I imagine not,” said Udge. Then she smiled. “I’d have to cover over the eyes and eliminate the nose. The ears would be enlarged for handles. He would have to be depilated.”

“He nearly is.”

“So much the worse. I suppose he is acquiring a rounded bowlish shape, though. In the middle.”

“No. Angular. Must be some sticks in there. You know, Udge, I really think you’re happy.”

“Happy? How can I be with what has happened? With my shame? But you might stop over sometime and play some cross squares. I still have the old set here. You may bring your… your Tusco. Provided he bathes.”

Dardan laughed. “I will if you promise not to inspect his nails. Of course he would think your hairstyle dowdy.” Dardan left, and Udge, who started to put her hands to her head, remembered they were covered with clay. With a grunt, she went back to her shaping.

The evening after his arrival, Samme stopped in to see Gamwyn, who asked him if he had learned what he wanted to about the Lost One.

The Atherer sighed and raised his shoulders in a shrug. “It was worth coming. There was a man named Jesus. I think Darew’s ‘Jeez I cry’ was once ‘Jesus Christ.’ What that means, though, I don’t know. It is a statement here, a bit of writing there. His adherents seemed to argue among themselves about him. Maybe they spent so much time doing that they lost him. Then there are other names, too—Ishmael, Mohammed, Graham, Plato. A mess. How could they have lost the Lost One?

“I begin to think, though, that the, history ain’t as important as the essence of the thing—and yet the history is important. But it ain’t entirely lost. It’ll be found. Somewhere we’ll find the full story. I feel sure of it. Meantime, we’ll have to get along on what we have—the kindness, generosity, love, goodwill. I’m sure there’s much beyond that. But not every society has that. You sure saw that When I come to you Pelbar, and find the same considerations I knew at home, I feel the presence of the Lost One. It ain’t like the Tusco. Or these Peshtak. But you see them take to it like birds to air. There’s something in them that’ll respond.

“Look at Misque. We all know she was sent to Jaiyan’s Station to spy. But they took her in. Look what it did to her.

“You know what, Gam? Maybe the Lost One is going to win in the long voyage after all. Maybe not. What could be worse than the great burning time? Something rose up to kill everything. Something was very afraid. But here we all are. It’s very strange, after all.”

They sat and watched the wood fire crumble for a while. Then Samme stood up and dusted himself. “Well, Gam, I ain’t used to this cold. We’re goin’ in the morning. Two of us want to. stay—Athe and Arit. They say with all the other people here, some Southocean people ought to be here, too.”

“They’ll be our hermits, our spies.”

Samme laughed. “We’ll keep track of each other. I hear your Jestak says we’re all one people. Maybe he’s right We’ll come back. The whole river is open now from the Bitter Sea to the South Ocean. We might as well use it all.”

“Might as well.”

In the morning a happy crowd watched Samme’s party leave. Udge surprised everybody by giving him one of her first fired bowls, a deep red with bands of white. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll keep it safe. We’ll take it all the way home—beyond the end of the river. Who knows? Someday it may go to the uttermost parts of the sea.” He looked at Gamwyn, and his broad mouth flashed white in a laugh as he dug his paddle into the mud and pushed out onto the misty river to begin his long trip home.