Land and Overland - Omnibus (66 page)

"I managed to preserve one good shirt and one pair of trews, but they seem to have shrunk somewhat."

"You have expanded." She halted to give him an appraising look. "It's difficult to realise you are the same baby-face who used to try to dazzle us with his clever city talk."

"I don't talk much at all these days," Bartan said ruefully. "There isn't much point in it."

Ennda gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. "Has Sondy not improved in any way? How long has it been? Close on two hundred days?"

"Two hundred! I've lost track of the time, but it must be something like that. Sondy remains as she was, but I'm not giving up hope."

"Good for you! Now, is she still in the bedroom?"

Bartan nodded, ushered Ennda into the house and led the way to the bedroom. He pushed open the door to reveal Sondeweere sitting on the edge of the bed in a full-length white nightdress. She was staring at the opposite wall and remained that way, apparently unaware of the presence of others. Her yellow hair was well brushed, but was unimaginatively arranged in a way which showed that Bartan had done it.

Ennda went into the room, knelt in front of Sondeweere and gathered her unresisting hands into hers. "Hello, Sondy," she said in a gentle but cheerful voice. "How are you today?"

Sondeweere made no response. The beautiful face was untroubled, the eyes unseeing.

Ennda kissed her on the forehead, stood up and returned to Bartan. "All right, young man! You can go off to town and enjoy yourself for a few hours and leave everything to me. Just tell me what has to be done about Sondy's food and the … mmm … consequences."

"Consequences?" Bartan gazed at Ennda in puzzlement until a look of exasperation made her meaning clear. "Oh! You don't have to do anything. She keeps herself clean, attends to all the basics by herself and eats anything that is prepared for her. It's just that nobody else seems to exist for her. She never speaks. She sits there on the bed all day, staring at the wall, and I don't exist. Perhaps I deserve it. Perhaps it's my punishment for bringing her to this place."

"Now you're being silly." Ennda put her arms around him and he clung to her, immensely comforted by her aura of warmth, femininity and resilience.

"What have we here?" Harro Phoratere boomed jovially, entering the shady kitchen from the sunlight outside. "Is one woman not enough for you, young Bartan?"

"Harro!" Ennda rounded on her husband. "What kind of a thing is that to say?"

"I'm sorry, lad—I wasn't thinking about your Sondy being…" Harro hesitated, the circular bite-scar glowing whitely against the pink of his cheek. "I'm sorry."

"No need to apologise," Bartan said. "I appreciate your coming here—it's more than generous."

"Nonsense! It's a welcome break for me as well. I intend to spend a very lazy aftday and—I give you fair warning—to consume a quantity of your wine." Harro glanced anxiously at the group of empty demijohns in a corner. "You
do
have some left, I trust."

"You'll find ample supplies in the cellar, Harro. It's the only solace left to me and I take care never to run short."

"I hope you don't drink too much," Ennda said, showing some concern.

Bartan smiled at her. "Only enough to guarantee a night's sleep. It's too quiet here—much too quiet."

Ennda nodded. "I'm sorry you have to bear your burden alone, Bartan, but it's all we can do to manage our own section now that so many of our family have given up and moved north. Did you know that the Wilvers and the Obrigails have gone as well?"

"After all their work! How many families are left now?"

"Five, apart from us."

Bartan shook his head dispiritedly. "If only the people would wait and…"

"If
you
wait around here much longer it'll be dark before you reach the tavern," Ennda cut in, pushing him towards the front entrance. "Go off and enjoy yourself for a few hours. Go on—
out
!"

With a last glance at his wife, withdrawn to her inaccessible world, Bartan went outside and summoned his bluehorn with a whistle. Within a few minutes he had it saddled and was riding west to New Minnett. He was unable to shake off the feeling that he was doing something shameful, planning to spend half a day free of his crushing burden of work and responsibility, but the fierceness of his hunger for a spell in the undemanding company of amiable topers told him the excursion would be remedial.

The ride through pastoral scenery was refreshing in itself, and on reaching the township he was surprised by his reaction to the sight of unknown people, clusters of buildings in a variety of sizes and styles, and the lofty rigging of sea-going ships at anchor in the river. When he had seen New Minnett for the first time it had seemed a tiny and remote outpost of civilisation—now, after his lengthy incarceration on the farm, it was a veritable metropolis.

He rode straight to the open-fronted building used as a tavern and was gratified to find in it many of the local characters who had welcomed him and his airboat on that far-off first visit. Compared to the harrowing downward trend of life in the Basket, it was as though the townsfolk had been suspended in time, preserved, ready to spring to life at his behest. The reeve, Majin Karrodall, was present—wearing his smallsword—as was the plump Otler, still protesting his sobriety, and a dozen other remembered individuals whose obvious contentment with their lot was a reassurance that life in general was well worth the living.

Bartan happily drank the strong brown ale with them, finding room for pot after pot of it without wearying of the taste. He was appreciative of the way in which the men—including Otler, who was not known for his tact—made no reference to his people's continuing evacuation of the Haunt. As though sympathising with the reasons for his visit they kept the talk on general subjects, much of the time discussing the latest news of the strange war that was being fought in the sky above the far side of the planet. The notion of a new breed of warriors who rode through the heavens on the backs of jet engines, without the support of balloons, seemed to have fired their imaginations. In particular, Bartan was struck by how often the name of Lord Toller Maraquine came up.

"Is it true that this Maraquine slew two kings at the time of the Migration?" he said.

"Of course it's true!" Otler banged his alepot down on the long table. "Why do you think they call him the Kingslayer? I was
there,
my friend! Saw it with my own eyes!"

"Balderdash!" Karrodall shouted amid a general cry of derision.

"Well, perhaps I didn't actually
see
what happened," Otler conceded, "but I saw King Prad's ship fall like a stone." He turned his shoulder to the others and aimed his words at Bartan. "I was a young soldier at the time—Fourth Sorka Regiment—and I was in one of the very first ships to leave Ro-Atabri. I never thought I'd complete the journey, but that is another story."

"One we've heard a thousand times," another man said, nudging his neighbour.

Otler made an obscene gesture at him. "You see, Bartan, Prad's ship got entangled with the one which Toller Maraquine was flying. Chakkell, who was then a prince, and Daseene and their three children were in Toller's ship, and he saved their lives by pushing the two ships apart. It took the strength of ten men, but he did it single-handed, and Prad's ship went down. I saw it plunge past me, and I'll never forget the way Prad was standing there at the rail. Tall and straight he was, unafraid, and his one blind eye was shining like a star.

"His death meant that Prince Leddravohr became King, and three days later—after the landing—Leddravohr and Toller fought a duel which lasted six hours. It ended when Toller struck Leddravohr's head off his shoulders with a single blow!"

"He must have been quite a man," Bartan said drily, trying to separate fact from fiction.

"Strength of ten! And what do you mean by must have
been
quite a man? None of those striplings up there can keep pace with him to this day. Do you know that in the first battle against the Landers, after all his fire arrows had been expended, he started cutting their balloons into shreds with his white sword? The selfsame sword with which he overcame Karkarand—Karkarand, mark you!—with only one blow. I tell you, Bartan, we owe that man everything. If I were twenty years younger, and didn't have this bad knee, I'd be up there with him at this very minute."

Reeve Karrodall guffawed into his beer. "I thought you said they had no need of gasbags at the midpoint."

"Very droll," Otler muttered. "Very droll indeed."

The following hours slipped by pleasantly and quickly for Bartan, and it was with some surprise that he noticed the sun's rays slanting redly into the tavern at a shallow angle. "Gentlemen," he said, getting to his feet, "I have stayed longer than it was my intention to do. I must leave you now."

"Have but one more," Karrodall said.

"I'm sorry, but I am obliged to leave. Friends are attending to the farm for me, and I have already done them a discourtesy."

Karrodall stood and took Bartan's hand. "I heard about your wife's misfortune, and I'm sorry," he whispered. "Would you not consider taking her away from that baneful place?"

"The place is just a place," Bartan said lightly, determined not to be offended at this late stage of the gathering, "and I won't surrender it. Good-bye, Majin."

"Good luck, son!"

Bartan saluted the rest of the company and walked out to where his bluehorn was tethered. The alcoholic warmth in his stomach and the pleasant optimistic tingle in his brain, important allies in the day-to-day battle of life, were at their height. He felt privileged to be alive, a beautiful feeling which in the past had suffused his existence, but which of late could only be recaptured near the bottom of a demijohn of black wine. He hoisted himself into the saddle and nudged the bluehorn forward, delegating to the intelligent creature the task of getting him home.

As the sky gradually deepened in colour the daytime stars became more prominent, and the spirals and braids of misty light began to emerge from the background. There were more major comets than usual. Bartan counted eight of them, their tails fanning right across the dome of the heavens, creating alternate bands of silver and dark blue among which meteors darted like fireflies. In his mellow speculative mood he wondered if men would ever solve the mystery of the sky's largest features. The stars were thought to be distant suns; the single green point of brilliance was known to be a third planet, Farland; and the nature of meteors was well understood because sometimes they crashed to the ground, leaving craters of various sizes. But what was the vast whirlpool of radiance which spanned the entire night sky for part of the year? Why did the heavenly population contain so many similar but smaller spirals, sometimes overlapping each other, ranging in shape from circles through ellipses to glowing spindles which concealed their structure until examined by telescope?

The train of thought caused Bartan to pay more attention than usual to the luminous arches of the sky, and thus it was that he noticed an entirely new phenomenon which might otherwise have escaped him. Due east, roughly in the direction of his farm, he saw a tiny and oddly-formed patch of light a short distance above the horizon. It was like a four-pointed star with in-curved sides, the kind of geometrical shape created at the middle of four touching circles, and each point appeared to be emitting a faint spray of prismatic colour. The object was too small to yield much detail without a glass, but its centre seemed to be teeming with multi-hued specks of brilliance. Intrigued, Bartan watched the eerily beautiful apparition sink swiftly downwards and pass out of sight behind the crest of the nearest drumlin.

Shaking his head in wonderment, Bartan urged his bluehorn forward to the high ground, greatly extending his range of vision, but the object was nowhere to be seen. What had it
been?
Meteors falling to earth sometimes blossomed into vivid colour, but they were accompanied by violent thunderclaps, whereas the phenomenon he had just witnessed had been characterised by silence and the smoothness of its movement. He tentatively reached the conclusion that the object had been much larger than he had supposed, dwarfed by distance, mysteriously sailing through space far beyond Overland's atmosphere.

With his mind fuelled for further musings about the wonders of the universe, Bartan continued on his way. Almost an hour later he caught the first glimpse of the yellow lights of his own farmhouse and felt a fresh pang of guilt over having detained the Phorateres until after darkness. The fact that Sondeweere and he had only one bed made it difficult for him to invite them to stay until morning, unless Harro and he were to spend the night sleeping on the floor. It seemed a poor reward for their kindness to him, especially as neighbourly acts had become so rare in the Basket. Wondering how he was going to excuse himself, he increased the bluehorn's speed to a trot, trusting it to maintain a sure footing on the star-silvered ground.

He was about a mile from the house when his surroundings were suddenly drenched in a varicoloured light so intense that his eyes reflexively clamped themselves shut.

The bluehorn reared up, barking in terror, and Bartan clung to it, quaking in expectation of the cataclysmic explosion which instinct told him had to accompany such a flash of brilliance. There was no explosion—only a ringing, reverberating silence during which he felt his clothing ripple and flap although there was no rush of air. He opened his eyes as the bluehorn dropped its forefeet to the ground. He found himself to be virtually blinded by after-images of trees and shrubs, orange and green silhouettes which seemed permanently printed on his retinas.

"Steady, old girl, steady," he breathed, patting the animal's neck. He blinked hard, knuckled his eyes and looked all about him in search of clues as to the origins of the bewildering, frightening and wildly unnatural event. The dark landscape had regained its eternal quietude. The sleeping world was trying to reassure him that things were as they had always been, but Bartan—prey to crawling apprehensions—knew better.