Maia (15 page)

A little less than two hours later they found themselves on the northeastern outskirts of Bekla and approaching the Blue Gate. The mid-day heat was beginning to lessen. Behind its walls the city, stirring like some great, prostrate animal, was awakening from its sun-drenched torpor. Yawning shopkeepers with poles were pushing up the heavy, top-hung shutters they had let fall at noon. A few street cries could be heard, and here and there women, with baskets on their arms, were venturing forth from doors and passage-ways. The cripples and beggars sleeping along the alleys woke, brushed the flies from their suppurating eyelids and once more set about the task of keeping alive. As the Deelguy slaves joined other carts and wayfarers jostling between the walls of the outer precinct leading to the gate itself, the city's two water-clocks struck the third hour of the afternoon, first one and then the other releasing an iron ball to fall into a resonant copper basin. The nearer clock tower stood a bare two hundred yards from the Blue Gate and at the sudden, reverberant clang Maia started, looking up quickly towards the gold-painted grilles below the tapering spire.

Although their journey had been only half as long as those of the two previous days, both girls were spent with the heat. Maia's left ankle was swollen and she winced at every step. As they followed the jekzha under the arch of the gate she suddenly stumbled and clutched at Occula's arm, leaning her head against the wall and panting.

Five or six passers-by, attracted by the sight of such a pretty girl in obvious distress, formed a small crowd, chattering to one another and proffering advice, until a respectable-looking, elderly woman, attended by a slave carrying her basket, stepped forward and helped Maia to a stone bench recessed in the wall.

Whether Zuno felt some slight twinge of conscience; whether he thought that it might look better if the girls did not arrive at Lalloc's in a state of sweating and bedraggled exhaustion; or whether he simply wished to avoid

a street-row (for some of the crowd were beginning to mutter and point at him), there can be no telling. At all events he got down from the jekzha, went across to one of the soldiers on guard-duty and asked to see the tryzatt in the guard-room (which was also situated in the thickness of the wall). Here, having shown Lalloc's token (which was stamped with the Leopard seal), he obtained leave to bring his property into the guard-room. Then he dispatched one of the Deelguy to hire a second jekzha, while he himself, having told the other to come and let him know as soon as it arrived, went across the street to the nearest wine-shop.

The soldiers off-duty were sympathetic to the girls, as most common people, themselves all-too-familiar with hardship and adversity, usually are towards anyone whom they perceive to be in genuine distress. When Occula had explained the reason for Maia's exhaustion there was a good deal of indignation.

"Made 'em walk from Naksh, tryze, since this morning," said one of the soldiers to the guard-commander, who had just returned from a quick and illicit drink with Zuno across the road. "And that fancy bastard of Lalloc's riding along in the shade."

"Rotten sod!" replied the tryzatt, his eyes taking in Maia from head to foot as she lay on a bench against the further wall. "Mean 'e never give 'em no water nor nothing? Well, Cran knows a soldier's life's nothing to shout about, but I'd rather that than yours, y' poor lass," he said to Occula.

"Oh, you jus' wait a bit," replied Occula, grinning up at him through her mask of dust. "Give it a year and we might both be on our backs-you on a battlefield and me in a Leopard's bed."

There was a general laugh, but the tryzatt, unhooking the wine-skin from the wall and tilting it to her mouth, put a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

"Well, just you be careful how you
do
go jumping into Leopards' beds, my girl-that's if you ever get that far. There's plenty don't come so well out of that game as they reckon they're going to."

"Ah, that's right," said another soldier. "You don't have to shake the
melikon
for the berries to fall."

"Oh, bugger the melikon!" said Occula. "This banzi's not sixteen and you start talkin' about berries fallin'! As you're all bein' so kind," she went on, "I wonder whether

there's any water we could wash in, if it's not too much trouble?"

The guard-quarters boasted a small, brick-floored bathhouse, with a piped supply from the Monju Brook-the outfall stream of the lake called the Barb. Here the girls stripped and sluiced each other down. When Zuno reappeared a quarter of an hour later they were both feeling- and looking-in much better shape; Occula in her orange metlan and Maia in the powder-blue robe, with a scarlet trepsis bloom, given her by one of the soldiers, stuck behind her ear. The guard-commander, having civilly but firmly refused a tip from Zuno, helped the girls into the hired jekzha, which thereupon set off, following the two Deelguy down Masons Street towards the Kharjiz.

Simply to be sitting down, moving effortlessly along, instead of trudging in the heat and dust, was enough to fill Maia with a delightful sense of luxury. The pleasure- which she had very seldom known before-of being carried on wheels, and the swift succession of sights and sounds pressing from all directions upon her fatigued senses, were bemusing, and imparted to her surroundings a rather dreamlike quality. She had never seen so many, and such different kinds of people, all intent upon their various affairs. She watched two men-evidently, from their uniform clothes, some kind of public servants-laying the dust in the street by sprinkling water from a metal tank on wheels; a hawker selling eggs and bread; an old woman haggling with a stall-keeper over a scale-full of brillions; two lads who were having difficulty in carrying a rolled-up carpet through the crowds; a man whose shop was itself a huge cage, full of brilliant-plumaged birds; a hard-faced, painted girl, little older than herself, standing watchfully on a corner with a studied air of being at a loose end; and a leather-aproned harness-maker at his bench, surrounded by his wares as he plied his heavy needle. The air was full of all manner of smells, some familiar, others entirely unknown to her-incense drifting through an open door at the top of a flight of stone steps; a medley of spicy odors from an open-fronted cookshop, inside which charcoal braziers were glowing in a shady, welcoming gloom; and, again and again, the languorous, citrous fragrances of flowers and blossoming shrubs-big, glowing blooms of kinds she had never seen-thriving in well-watered beds beside the street and allaying with their greenery the oppression of summer's

end. All about her-so that she had to raise her voice even to talk to Occula beside her-rang the multifoliate clamor of the city; the crying of wares, the shouting of children at play, the gabbling of bargainers and quarrellers, the tappings and hammerings peculiar to tinkers, carpenters, smiths, cobblers, masons, wheelwrights. Once, as the jek-zha went by, she caught for a few moments the voice of someone singing a Tonildan ballad she recognized. At a crossing, a scarlet-liveried slave strode across their front, staff in hand, crying "Make way! Make way!", followed by a curtained litter adorned, behind and before, with the cognizance of a crowned leopard. Across the roof-tops sounded from the upper city the wavering, gong-like notes of copper bells.

Most of all, Maia was amazed by the size and grandeur of the buildings. Bekla, growing up upon a natural site for a city, with a virtually impregnable hilltop citadel, watered by a lake and standing at the convergence of five roads traversing a wide plain, had been built almost entirely from the stone quarries of Mount Crandor. Time out of mind it had been renowned for its builders, masons and stone-carvers. Almost every house, from the Palace of the Barons to the lodgings for the itinerant herdsmen, was of stone. The market-colonnades, the temples, the graceful towers and other public buildings were of a beauty and magnificence unparalleled in any other city throughout the empire. The very fact that the old ceremonial name, Bekla-lo-Senguel-Cerith ("The Garden of Dancing Stone"), was still commonly used in poems, songs and ballads testified to the universal pride and veneration felt for the capital.

All this Maia, like everyone else, had heard from infancy. But there is a world of difference between hearing tell and seeing for oneself. Staring up at rows of decorated corbels supporting overhanging upper stories, at innumerable foliate chamfers and casement moldings, at delicate interpenetrations of stone executed with almost incredible craftsmanship and skill, the spontaneous Maia, hitherto entirely ignorant of such things, was entranced by what seemed to her little short of a miracle-of hundreds of miracles. How could
stone
be made to float like lilies, curl like waves, drift like clouds? Who had raised these stones, piling them up to stand firm, one upon another, far above the heads of mortals walking safe and unconcerned below; and then, not content with that, carved them

into flowers and foliage, snarling beasts, armed men, naked girls?

Why, 'tis past all believing! she thought. If ever I see Tharrin again, reckon
I'll
be the one as does the talking. Occula might be right after all-if only things turn out lucky, I could find myself better off than ever I was back home. She sighed. All the same, I'd like to see the old lake again, and have a swim under the falls, that I would.

Their progress was slow, for as the afternoon cooled the streets grew ever more busy. Several times their jekzha was forced to a halt and Zuno, ahead, was obliged to stop and wait until they could catch him up. Their journey, though only a little over three-quarters of a mile, lasted a full half-hour.

Amid all the excitement and activity, Occula had entirely recovered her spirits, and was highly tickled by the prospect of arriving at their destination on wheels rather than on foot. Furthermore, it was flattering to have beside her the ingenuous Maia, full of wonder and curiosity and hanging upon her every word. For a time she was content simply to rest her feet on the rail in front of them and reply to Maia's questions. Soon, however, her natural energy and unsleeping sense of self-interest began to take over.

"Come on, banzi," she said, putting an arm round Maia's shoulders and impelling her forward on to the edge of the seat. "Bugger the bells, and the carvin' too!
They
woan' do anythin' for you! You've got to show off a bit, my lass! This is no time to be starin' round at other people and forgettin' all about yourself.
They're
the ones who've got to be doin' the starin'. Our job's to put on some style!"

"Whatever for?" asked Maia. "We're going to this Lal-loc man, aren't we?"

"Yes, but you never know who may happen to see you and take a fancy: that's the way a good shearna works- never misses casual opportunities. Lean forward, pull your dress down a bit. Get those deldas out-no, right down to the strawberries, come on-"

"Here, steady on!" Maia turned scarlet as the blac' girl pulled down her bodice.

"That Ortelgan stiff was right-blushin'
does
suit you," replied Occula. "I doan' know about the men, banzi, but
I
could eat you up."

"Hey, girls, any room for a little one?" called a young

fellow in a carter's smock and leggings, cracking his whip to attract their attention.

"I like big ones," answered Occula, holding her hands up about a foot apart.

"And
I
like willing ones," said the carter. "I like that black skin of yours, too. Where d'you come from, lass?"

"The finest country in the world," replied Occula.

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Well, where I come from, you see, the girls give so much pleasure that the men have all died of it, so I've had to look elsewhere."

"Fancy that, now!" said the carter. "And who's your pretty friend?"

"One you can' afford," answered Occula.

"By Lespa, and I reckon that's true enough for now!" called the young fellow after them, as the jekzha began to move on. "Might see you again one day, though. Where you going?"

"Time you've made your fortune," replied Occula, "we'll be so famous you woan' have any trouble findin' us!"

At the western end of Masons Street the jekzha turned left into the foot of Storks Hill, but the girls had scarcely time to glimpse, behind them, the breath-taking Tamarrik Gate before they turned again, this time to the right, down the broad thoroughfare of the Kharjiz and so oh into the Slave Market.

Since this was not a market day the big square was not crowded. A gang of municipal slaves was at work clearing and sweeping, while two masons were repairing one of the raised sale platforms on the north side. Here, too, all was built of stone and beautified with flowers-beds of golden lilies and scarlet askinnias dividing the various rostra and barracoons one from another. Each roofed and pillared rostrum was decorated with a carved relief, depicting scenes appropriate to the kind of slaves sold on it. This was recent work, commissioned by Queen Forms herself-a great promoter of the slave trade.

"Oh, look at the men fighting!" cried Maia, pointing at a battle scene which ran down one entire side of a rostrum forty feet long.

"That must be where they sell the soldiers," replied Occula.

"They
sell
soldiers?" Maia was puzzled.

"Well, some kinds, yes," answered the black girl. "Pris-

oners taken in war-you know, Katrians and Terries-fellows from Terekenalt-if they're not badly wounded or disabled, and if no one ransoms them, they're often sold. They wouldn' be any good for the regular army, you see-not former enemy wouldn'-but provincial barons buy them for their household companies, and often people from other countries buy them, too. The further off a man comes from, the more useful he is to a baron's local bunch of bastards, you see."

"Oh, and that platform there, look! That must be for the roadmakers, I suppose. What wonderful pictures! I've never seen anything like them!"

In fact, of course, Maia had never seen any graphic or sculptural art whatever, except for crude peasant work at Meerzat and round about: and although, often, that was not lacking in a certain power and beauty, it had not prepared her for the art of such great Beklan craftsmen as Fleitil, Sandruhlet and those others whose names, still known today, can only make us regret that virtually all their work is lost to us for ever. Gazing at Sandruhlet's frieze-of which only a fragment survives-of the pioneer gang driving the Gelt road into the foothills, all newly painted in brilliant, stylized colors intensifying its half-barbaric impact, Maia felt herself actually tingling at the sight of the straining, muscular young men, the rain glistening on their half-naked bodies as they heaved on the sledge-ropes.