Orion Shall Rise (8 page)

The friends that he had made.

‘At Harpford they knew me right well as a drinking man,

Singing man, gambling man,

A worker when I chose,

Adorer of womankind, rambler of countryside –

None saw me pass it but

The minnows and the crows.

‘A little way south of the place I called Otterton

Ended my pilgrimage,

Where willows roof a shoal.

My bones lie there nameless, but everywhere whispering,

Wind-borne and stream-borne, go

The names that were my soul.’

Plik ended with a shiver of fingers across the strings of his lute, laid the instrument down on the table at which he sat benched, seized a goblet of wine and drained half of it in a gulp.

‘What was that?’ asked Sesi.

Plik shrugged. ‘I suppose I’ll call it “Names.”’

Standing before him, the barmaid raised a finger in reproach. The motion made her hips undulate. They were nicely rounded, like the rest of her. A low-cut, knee-length gown set that shape off to advantage. Her face was rather pretty too, with dark ringlets to frame brown eyes, snub nose, heavy lips, clear complexion.

‘I mean what’s it about, silly,’ she said. ‘You know I don’t know much Angley.’

Plik drank more slowly. ‘Well, it isn’t quite autobiographical – thus far, anyhow – though it does describe the area I come from.’

She gave a slight, seductive shudder. ‘Now don’t you tell me more. I caught barely enough to make me nervous. Honestly, Plik, when you get into one of your weird moods, it scares me.’

‘No harm intended to you, ever, dearest Vineleaf.’ A smile twisted his mouth. ‘I’ll make amends. My next will be in Francey, and in praise of you. Incidentally, I’m near the end of learning Brezhoneg – not everyday Brezhoneg, but the literary language. Soon I’ll do a ballad in it, all for you and all about you.’

She bent over and bestowed a swift kiss on him. He reached for her, but she swayed backward with an ease that bespoke practice.
‘You are an old dear.’ She giggled. ‘But, please, not
all
about me.’

‘Oh, no.’ Plik uttered a rusty chuckle. ‘I’ve too much competition as matters stand.’ He emptied his goblet, reached into his belt pouch, and slapped down an iron coin. ‘Another, if you will,’

She took money and vessel while she looked archly across the table. ‘You, sir?’

Iern shook his head. ‘Not yet, thanks.’

Both men’s gazes followed her as she walked to the barrel near the bar. This early in the afternoon, they three were alone in the Pey-d’Or. It was a tavern mostly for laborers and sailors. Smoke-blackened beams upheld a low ceiling above a clay floor. Benches flanked four tables. A basement room with a dusty-windowed clerestory, it was already dim.

‘What a pleasant sight,’ the pilot murmured in Angley. ‘To tell the truth, I could have tossed mine off, but I’ll wait till you get your refill so she’ll make another trip. She wags her tail in such a cheerful fashion.’

Plik started. ‘What?’ he said in his dialect of the same tongue. ‘Your usage – are you of the Aerogens?’

Iern nodded. ‘We needn’t make a fuss about it. I admire your song. It’s eerie, yes, but I liked it, and you fitted the words very well to that old folk tune.’ He offered his hand. ‘I’m Talence Iern Ferlay.’

‘The same –? – the Stormrider who – An honor, sir.’ The poet accepted the clasp. ‘I’m Peyt Rensoon, from Devon across the Channel. Everybody here calls me Plik, though.’

They regarded each other. The Angleyman was tall and lanky and ungainly in his movements. A narrow skull bore a face thin and deeply lined, jutting nose, long chin, pale-blue eyes. Alcohol and tobacco had hoarsened what was once a melodious voice. Like Iern, he was clean-shaven, and he kept his receding sandy hair cut more short. However, his blouse, trousers, and shoes were in worse shape than the Clansman’s rough but sturdy outfit.

‘May I ask what brings you to us?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, I was visiting my mother and stepfather in Carnac. His oldest son has lately become skipper of a small freight schooner, among several that the father owns. He set off on a trip down the Gulf to Port Bordeu, stopping first at Kemper to get his cargo. I thought I’d ride that far. I used to carouse in Kemper, on furloughs while a Cadet, often in this very den, but I hadn’t seen the town for
years. It hasn’t changed much, has it? Except for our charming servitrice, of course.’

Plik grimaced. ‘No, places like this don’t change easily. They’re too haunted.’

Surprised, Iern considered the remark for a few seconds. Haunted? Why, Kemper was the largest community in Brezh, its chief seaport, capital of Ar-Mor. … Wait. More than history and prehistory brooded above its narrow streets. A cathedral raised in the Middle Ages to honor St. Corentin, who was among the Bretons when they arrived from the province of Britannia, which Rome had let go; today its crumbling majesty knew the rites of three separate faiths. … A museum, rebuilt after centuries had gnawed away the former episcopal palace that had been its predecessor, housing relics more ancient than Breton or Roman or Gaul, megaliths like those which stood in arrays outside Carnac.…

Iern guessed Plik meant ghosts more newly made, though amply old by now. Kemper became consequential because it was spared the destruction that fell on the great cities of Brezh during the Judgment, and because engineers afterward did not find it impossible to broaden and deepen the upper Odet River enough, and dig out a harbor basin big enough, for such ships as their world was able to launch. If he had a sense of history, as he appeared to do, then wherever he looked as he wandered about, Plik perforce remembered billionfold deaths and high hopes crushed.

‘Why did you come, then?’ Iern blurted. ‘Why do you stay?’ He checked himself and prepared to apologize. Most groundlings were flattered, overjoyed, when a Clansperson asked about them, and ready to confide at embarrassing length. This man wasn’t typical, not of anything Iern had met.

Sesi cut him off. She had returned with the wine and Plik’s change, and poised watchful. ‘Must you talk Angley?’ she complained. ‘I mean, it’s sort of dull for me at this time of day. Later it’s more fun, but then they keep me busy, the fellows do.’

Iern suspected some of them kept her busy with more than fetching and carrying.

‘Vineleaf,’ said Plik in Francey, ‘you should know that we have with us –’

Tern,’ the pilot interrupted, ‘Plain “Iern” will do.’ He didn’t want her overexcited.

‘Ah, well.’ Plik waved expansively. ‘Why don’t you join us,
Vineleaf? Tap yourself a glass, on me.’

‘Oh, I really shouldn’t – Well, thanks. A girl does get tired and thirsty. Iern, are you ready for another?’

The Clansman drained his own goblet. ‘I suppose. But please let me treat. You too, Plik. Aren’t poets traditionally paid in wine?’

‘Ah, you know more than I realized.’ The other man’s large Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped what he had. ‘Yes, it’s been said down the ages that the Spirit shuns wealth. I suspect this may have been promulgated by lords who wanted to get their entertainment cheap, but no matter. I at least am in no peril of riches.’ He spoke with an exaggerated precision that suggested he was drunk.

He confirmed that in Iern’s mind when he leaned back, elbow on table, shank over knee, and stared after Sesi while words tumbled out of him:

‘You wondered what I’m doing in exile. Well, I’ve always been an exile, and more in my birthland than here. Do you care to listen? I’m never loath to talk about myself, but my friends in the Pey-d’Or have heard my story too often. Therefore I retell it in bits and pieces, in the songs I make for their amusement and for the drinks they stand me, and they never recognize it. Vineleaf, darling,’ he called across the room, ‘don’t pout. I promise I’ll keep it short this time.

‘I mentioned being a national of Devon in southern Angleylann. Do you know it at all?’

‘Yes, I was there once with my stepfather, when he had merchandise to trade,’ Iern said. ‘A beautiful country.’

‘Peaceful, pastoral, and dull,’ Plik answered, ‘aside from those strangenesses you find in any rural area. They’re different from the strangenesses of cities, you know. My father was a village shopkeeper but my mother had Welsh blood in her – still does, I hope. I left in disgrace eighteen years ago, when I was twenty.

‘You see, I was always a moody, solitary boy, the first of three who lived but not much help at home, always with my nose in any book I could find when I wasn’t drifting around the landscape. In my teens I made a halfhearted attempt to become respectable – but you heard my song. A clergyman of the Free Church that governs Devon liked a few of my early efforts, and on his recommendation I received a scholarship at the college in Glasstobry. It was a wonderful chance, those thousands and thousands of books.… I tried to be a good student. I truly did, for more than a year. But the opportunities were so numerous to drink and gamble and chase
women and – and at last I played an elaborate practical joke which got me expelled.’

‘Why did you do that?’ Iern inquired. He’d pulled his share of pranks while a Cadet, but kept them within reason. He would never have risked not becoming a flyer.

Sesi brought the three filled cups on a tray and set them down – and herself, beside the Clansman.

At that, pain crossed Plik’s countenance and he replied harshly: ‘The Bishop couldn’t understand that I had to do it. Had to. Glasstobry is so old, so haunted, oh, far more haunted than Kemper.’

His tone leveled off, though now a trifle slurred: ‘Well, I couldn’t stomach the idea of slinking back home. I oddjobbed my way abroad. The captain of the ship that happened to bring me here enjoyed my songs, and introduced me to the owner, who engaged me to perform at a banquet he gave in honor of the Mestromor. His Benevolence, Arnec IV, was actually impressed, and wanted to keep me on hand. He gave me a position in his library – oh, books, books, books! The Book and the Bottle – do you know, you don’t really require a group of fellow drinkers. You can find a book such a companion that it’s quite possible to drink with it and none else. … His Benevolence summoned me to many court functions, where I was well rewarded for my talents.’

Iern studied the down-at-heels figure. ‘Something went wrong,’ he deduced.

Sesi tossed her head. ‘What’d you expect?’ she said impatiently. ‘He went back to lushing, not drinking but lushing. He’d arrive soused at court and make a fool of himself.’ She leaned close to Iern. He felt her breath on his cheek. ‘Let’s hear about you,’ she insinuated.

‘My demon was in me,’ Plik declared stiffly. ‘I leave it to your judgment whether the word “demon” is to be taken in its Classical or medieval sense.
I
think the trouble was that gradually I lost interest in composing nice little ditties for nice little people. What I offered instead disturbed them.’

‘Foof!’ Sesi bounced to her feet. ‘Pardon me, Iern. I have to go behind the house. I’ll be back in a minute.’ She swayed over the floor. Mute, Plik watched until she had climbed the rear staircase out of this basement and closed the door.

Then he shook himself and finished: ‘At last the Mestromor told
me to keep away. He’s a kind man; he let me stay on at the library. But all I care to do with the books is read them. My duties are deadly simple. Hence I pay a succession of poor students half my salary to handle them for me. What’s left, I eke out by occasionally performing in a better class of taverns than this, where the tips are good, and by occasionally sitting in a marketplace booth as a public scribe. A grubby life, but mostly a merry one.’

He took a deep draft. Silence fell. Iern sipped his own wine. It was cheap stuff, thin and sour. Plik had known far better.

‘I don’t wish to pry,’ the Clansman said at length, cautiously, ‘but it seems odd to me that, well, that you stick in Kemper. You could make a fresh start in, well, even Tournev.’

‘Why don’t I?’ the poet rasped. ‘Why do you think?’ His glance sought the door above the rear stairs.

‘Oh. She’s attractive, in her way, but –’ Iern decided to say no more.

‘In me is my demon,’ Plik mumbled. ‘In her
is
the very Goddess. And me a Christian who deplores the heresies into which my Breizhad friends have fallen. Sometimes she lets me sleep with her.’

He rattled forth a laugh and turned his look upon the pilot. ‘She’s right about my making an ass of myself,’ he said. ‘I’ve done it afresh. Could we talk about you for a while?’

‘You seem to have heard of me,’ Iern said, a shade self-consciously. ‘There isn’t much I can add.’

‘There’s everything.’ Plik made a wobbly gesture. ‘Not the showy things – your exploit against the whirlwind, year before last; your father, whom the Clan Seniors will probably choose for Skyholm’s next Captain when old Toma Sark dies; your slightly legendary status among the pysans of Ar-Mor and, I understand, your unusual popularity among many pysans elsewhere; your leadership of the Weather Corps aerobatic glider team; your coruscant social life – no, not even your championship of such peculiar causes as kindness to animals, or your outspoken opinion that Gaeanity is a menace to the Domain – Let those be. I’d rather know what it feels like to be you. To stand in Skyholm, looking thirty kilometers down to Earth while infinity surrounds you. To believe that the anim, the basic identity of Charles Talence himself, may someday pass into you, coalescing with the uniquenesses of ancestors who already indwell. To know that your Aerogens and its lofty citadel are more than the governors and guardian of an entire civilization, they are
its central myth. For every society must have a myth to live by, else it’s a walking corpse that will soon fall to the ground –’

‘O-o-oh!’

The squeal passed through his grandiloquence and nailed it to the spot. He and Iern yanked attention to Sesi. Unnoticed by either, she had come back from the outhouse and stood on the landing with ears open wide as her eyes.

‘Oh, you’re a saint! You’re
Talence Iern Ferlay!’
She scampered down the stairs and across the floor to cast herself on her knees before him. ‘Oh, sir, oh, sir!’

Oh, damn,
he thought.