Collected Short Fiction, page 801
In this way I cudgeled the fear from my damp soul and studied the sky without regard for the spear that might be aimed at my back—and in minutes my former fretting seemed an absurdity to me. I would stand here for days, if need be, unafraid. At once I had the reward of this triumph over self: against the shimmering fierceness of the sky I made out a dark floating form, a notch in the heavens, and this time it was no illusion, for my youthful eyes spied wings and horn. Did the others see it? Was the bird mine to attempt? If I made the kill, would the septarch pound my back and call me his best son? All was silence from the other hunters.
“One cries claim!” I shouted jubilantly and lifted my weapon and eyed the sight, remembering what I had been taught, to let the inner mind make the calculations, to aim and fire in one swift impulse before the intellect, by quibbling, could spoil the intuition’s command.
And in the instant before I sent my bolt aloft came a ghastly outcry from my left. I fired without aiming at all, turning in the same instant toward my father’s place and seeing him half hidden beneath the madly flapping form of another hornfowl that had gored him from spine to belly. The air about them was clouded with red sand as the monster’s wings furiously slapped the ground. The bird was struggling to take off, but a hornfowl cannot lift a man’s weight, though this does not prevent them from attacking us. I ran to aid the septarch. He still was shouting and I saw his hands clutching for the hornfowl’s scrawny throat, but now there was a liquid quality about his cries, a bubbling tone, and when I reached the scene—I was the first one there—he lay sprawled and quiet, the bird still rammed through him and covering his body like a black cloak. My blade was out; I slashed the hornfowl’s neck as if it were a length of hose, kicked the carcass aside, began to wrench desperately at the demonic head mounted so hideously upon the septarch’s upturned back. Now the others came; they pulled me away. Someone seized me by the shoulders and shook me until my fit was past. When I turned to them again they closed their ranks to keep me from seeing my father’s corpse—and then, to my dismay, they dropped to their knees before me to do homage.
Homage to me.
But of course it was Stirron and not I who became septarch in Salla. His crowning was a grand event, for, young though he was, he would be the prime septarch of the province. Salla’s six other septarchs came to the capital—only on such an occasion were they ever to be found at once in the same city—and for a time everything was feasting and banners and the blare of trumpets. Stirron was at the center of it all and I on the margins, which was as it should be, though it left me feeling more like a stableboy than a prince. Once he was enthroned, Stirron offered me titles and land and power, but he did not really expect me to accept and I did not. Unless a septarch is a weakling, his younger brothers had best not stay nearby to help him rule, for such help is often not desired. I had had no living uncles on my father’s side of the family and I did not care to have Stirron’s sons be able to make the same statement; therefore I took myself quickly from Salla once the time of mourning was ended.
I went to Glin, my mother’s land. There, however, things were unsatisfactory for me and after a few years I moved on to the steamy province of Manneran, where I won my wife and sired my sons, became a prince in more than name and lived happily and sturdily until my time of changes began.
II
PERHAPS I should set down some words concerning my world’s geography.
There are five continents on our planet of Borthan. In this hemisphere are two, Velada Borthan and Sumara Borthan, which is to say, the Northern World and the Southern World. It is a long sea journey from any shore of these continents to the continents of the opposite hemisphere, which have been named merely Umbis, Dabis, Tibis, that is, One, Two, Three.
Of those three distant lands I can tell you very little. They first were explored some seven hundred years ago by a septarch of Glin and not five seeking-parties have been to them in all the time since. No human folk dwell in that hemisphere. Umbis is said to be largely like the Burnt Lowlands, but worse, with golden flames bursting from the tormented land in many places. Dabis is jungles and fever-ridden swamps. Tibis is covered with ice.
We are not a race afflicted with the wanderlust. I myself was never a voyager until circumstances made me one. Though the blood of the ancient Earthmen flows in our veins and they were wanderers whose demons drove them out to prowl the stars, we of Borthan stay close to home. Even I who am somewhat different from my comrades in my way of thinking never hungered to see the snowfields of Tibis or the marshes of Davis, except perhaps when I was a child and eager to gobble all the universe. Among us it is considered a great thing merely to journey from Salla to Glin, and rare indeed is the man who has crossed the continent, let alone ventured to Sumara Borthan, as I have done.
More of that later.
Velada Borthan is the home of our civilization. The mapmakers’ art reveals it to be a large squarish landmass with rounded corners. Two great V-shaped indentations puncture its periphery: along the northern coast, midway between the eastern and western corners, is the Polar Gulf and, due south on the opposite coast, is the Gulf of Sumar. Between those two bodies of water lie the Lowlands, a trough that spans the entire continent from north to south. No point in the Lowlands rises higher above sea level than the height of five men and many places notably in the Burnt Lowlands, are far below sea level.
A folk tale we tell our children concerns the shape of Velada Borthan. We say that the great iceworm Hrungir, born in the waters of the North Polar Sea, stirred and woke one day in sudden appetite and began to nibble at the northern shore of Velada Borthan. The worm chewed for a thousand thousand years, until it had eaten out the Polar Gulf. Then, its voracity having made it somewhat ill, it crawled up on the land to rest and digest what it had devoured. Uneasy at the stomach, Hrungir wriggled southward, causing the land to sink beneath its vast weight and the mountains to rise in compensation to the east and west of its resting place. The worm rested longest in the Burnt Lowlands, which accordingly were depressed more deeply than any other region. In time the worm’s appetite revived and it resumed its southward crawl, coming at last to a place where a range of mountains running from east to west barred its advance. Then it chewed the mountains, creating Stroin Gap, and proceeded toward our southern coast. In another fit of hunger the worm bit out the Gulf of Sumar. The waters of the Strait of Sumar rushed in to fill the place where the land had been and the rising tide carried Hrungir to the continent of Sumara Borthan, where now the iceworm lives, coiled beneath the volcano Vashnir and emitting poisonous fumes. So the fable goes.
THE long narrow basin that we think of as Hrungir’s track is divided into three districts. At the northern end we have the Frozen Lowlands, a place of perpetual ice where no man ever is seen: legend has it that the air is so dry and cold that a single breath will turn a man’s lungs to leather. South of the Frozen Lowlands lie the immense Burnt Lowlands, which are almost totally without water and on which the full fury of our sun constantly falls. Our two towering north-south mountain ranges prevent a drop of rain from entering the Burnt Lowlands, nor do any rivers or streams reach it. The soil is bright red, with occasional yellow streaks this we blame on the heat of Hrungir’s belly, though our geologists tell another tale. Small plants live in the Burnt Lowlands, taking their nourishment from I know not where and there are many kinds of beasts, all of them strange, deformed and unpleasant. At the southern end of the Burnt Lowlands is a deep east-west valley, several days’ journey in breadth. On its far side lies the small district known as the Wet Lowlands.
Northerly breezes coming off the Gulf of Sumar carry moisture through Stroin Gap; these winds meet the fierce hot blasts out of the Burnt Lowlands and are forced to drop their burden not far above the Gap, creating a land of dense, lush vegetation. Never do the water-laden breezes from the south succeed in getting north of the Wet Lowlands to bathe the zone of red soil. The Frozen Lowlands, as I have said, go forever unvisited, and the Burnt Lowlands are entered only by hunters and those who must travel between the eastern and western coasts, but the Wet Lowlands are populated by several thousand farmers, who raise exotic fruits for the city folk. I am told that the constant rain rots their souls, that they have no form of government in there, and that our customs of self-denial are imperfectly observed. I would be among them now, to discover their nature at first hand, if only I could slip through the cordon that my enemies have set up to the south of this place.
The Lowlands are flanked by two immense mountain ranges: the Huishtors in the east, the Threishtors in the west. These mountains begin on Velada Borthan’s northern coast, virtually at the shores of the North Polar Sea, and march southward, gradually curving inland; the two ranges would join not far from the Gulf of Sumar if they were not separated by Stroin Gap. They are so high that they intercept all winds. Therefore their inland slopes are barren, but the slopes facing the oceans enjoy fertility.
Mankind in Velada Borthan has carved out its domain in the two coastal strips, between the oceans and the mountains. In most places the land is at best marginal, so that we are hard put to have all the food we need and life is constant struggle against hunger. Often one wonders why our ancestors, when they came to this planet so many generations ago, chose Velada Borthan as their settling-place; the farming would have been far easier in the neighboring continent of Sumara Borthan and even swampy Dabis might have offered more cheer. The explanation we are given is that our forefathers were stern, diligent folk who relished challenge and feared to let their children dwell in a place where life might be insufficiently harsh. Velada Borthan’s coasts were neither uninhabitable nor unduly comfortable; therefore they suited the purposes. I believe this to be true, for certainly the chief heritage we have from those ancient ones is the notion that comfort is sin and ease is wickedness. My bondbrother Noim, though, once remarked that the first settlers chose Velada Borthan because that was where their starship happened to come down and, having hauled themselves across all the immensities of space, they lacked the energy to travel onward even one more continent in quest of a better home. I doubt it, but the slyness of the idea is characteristic of my bondbrother’s taste for irony.
The firstcomers planted their initial settlement on the western coast, at the place we call Threish, that is, the place of the Covenant. They multiplied rapidly and, because they were a stubborn and quarrelsome tribe, they splintered early, this group and that going off to live apart. Thus the nine western provinces came into being.
In time the limited resources of the west were exhausted and emigrants sought the eastern coast. We had no air transport then, not that we have a great deal now; we are not a mechanically minded people and we lack natural resources to serve as fuels. Thus they went east by groundcar or whatever served as groundcars then. The three Threishtor passes were discovered and the bold ones bravely entered the Burnt Lowlands. We tell long mythic epics of the hardships of these crossings. Getting over the Threishtors into the Lowlands was difficult, but getting out on the far side was close to impossible, for there is only one route over the Huishtors out of the red-soil country fit for humans, and that is by way of Salla’s Gate, the finding of which was no small task. But they found it and poured through and established my land of Salla. When the quarreling came, a good many went north and founded Glin and later others went south to settle in holy Manneran. For a thousand years it was sufficient to have but three provinces in the east, until in a new quarrel the small but prosperous maritime kingdom of Krell carved itself out of a corner of Glin and a corner of Salla.
There also were some folk who could not abide life in Velada Borthan at all, and put to sea from Manneran, sailing off to settle in Sumara Borthan. But one need not speak of them in a geography lesson; I will have much to say Of Sumara Borthan and its people when I have begun to explain the changes that entered my life.
THIS cabin where I hide myself now is a shabby thing. Its clapboard walls were indifferently put together to begin with and now are crazed, so that gaps yawn at the joints and no angle is true. The desert wind passes through here unhindered; my. page bears a light coating of red soil, my clothes are caked with it, even my hair has a red tinge. Lowlands creatures crawl freely in with me. I see two of them moving about the earthen floor now, a many-legged gray thing the size of my thumb and a sluggish two-tailed serpent not as long as my foot. For hours they have circled one another idly, as though they wish to be mortal foes but cannot decide which of them is to eat the other. Dry companions for a parched time.
I should not mock this place, though. Someone troubled to drag its makings here, in order that weary hunters might have shelter in this inhospitable land. Someone put it together, doubtless with more love than skill, and left it here for me and it serves me well. Perhaps it is no fit home for a septarch’s son, but I have known my share of palaces and I no longer need stone walls and groined ceilings. It is peaceful here. I am far from the fishmongers and the drainers and the wine-peddlers and all those others whose songs of commerce clang in the streets of cities. A man can think; a man can look within his soul and find those things that have been the shaping of him, draw them forth and examine them and come to know himself. In this our world we are forbidden by custom to make our souls known to others, yes, but why has no one before me observed that that same custom, without intending it, keeps us from coming to know ourselves? For nearly all my life I kept the proper social walls between myself and others, and not till the walls were down did I see I had walled myself away from myself as well. But here in the Burnt Lowlands I have had time to contemplate these matters and to arrive at understanding. This is not the place I would have chosen for myself, but I am not unhappy here.
I do not think they will find me for some while yet.
Now it is too dark in here to write. I will stand by the cabin door and watch the night come rolling across the Lowlands toward the Huishtors. The stars will blaze. Schweiz once tried to show me the sun of Earth from a mountaintop in Sumara Borthan. He insisted he could see it and begged me to squint along the line of his pointing hand, but I think he was playing a game with me, I think that that sun may not be seen at all from our sector of the galaxy. Schweiz played many a game with me when we traveled together, and perhaps he will play more such games one day if ever we meet again—if still he lives.
LAST night in a dream my bondsister Halum Helalam came to me.
With her there can never be more games and only through the slippery-walled tunnel of dreams is she apt to reach me. Therefore while I slept she glowed in my mind more brightly than any star that lights this desert, but waking brought me sadness and shame and the memory of my loss of her who is irreplaceable.
Halum of my dream wore only a light filmy veil through which her small rosy-tipped breasts showed—and her slim thighs and her flat belly, the belly of an unchilded woman. It was not the way she often dressed in life, especially when paying a call on her bondbrother, but this was the Halum of my dream, made wanton by my lonely and troubled soul. Her smile was warm and tender and her dark shining eyes glistened with love.
In dreams one’s mind lives on many levels. On one level of mine I was a detached observer, looking down upon my own sleeping body. On another level I lay asleep. The dream-self that slept did not perceive Halum’s presence, but the dream-self that watched was aware of her and I, the true dreamer, was aware of them both and also aware that all I saw was coming to me in a vision. But inevitably there was some mingling of these levels of reality, so that I could not be sure who was the dreamer and who the dreamed, nor was I certain that the Halum who stood before me in such radiance was a creature of my fantasy rather than the living Halum I once had known.
“Kinnall,” she whispered, and in my dream I imagined that my sleeping dream-self awoke, propping himself upon his elbows, with Halum kneeling close beside his cot. She leaned forward until her breasts brushed the shaggy chest of that man who was I, and touched her lips to mine in a flick of a caress and said, “You look so weary, Kinnall.”
“You should not have come here.”
“One was needed. One came.”
“It is not right. To enter the Burnt Lowlands alone, to seek out one who has brought you only harm—”
“The bond that links one to you is sacred.”
“You’ve suffered enough for that bond, Halum.”
“One has not suffered at all,” she said, and kissed my sweaty forehead. “How you must suffer, hiding in this dismal oven!”
“It is no more than one has earned,” I said.
Even in my dream I spoke to Halum in the polite grammatical form. I had never found it easy to use the first person with her; certainly I never used it before my changes and afterward, when no reason remained for me to be so chaste with her, I still could not. My soul and my heart had yearned to say “I” to Halum and my tongue and lips were padlocked by propriety.
