The Hollowing (29 page)

One of the argonauts laughed. A length of rigging slipped, uncurling as it plunged, and was caught by a man below. The new mast was up, the sail being hauled to its cross-bar. The accident broke the moment’s mood, and activity began again.

Five minutes later, one of the planks at the rear of the ship began to move. Curious, Richard moved closer through the rock and trees. The panel had been loosened by the force of the beaching. It opened along three feet of its length, and a dark, frightened face peered out at the shore. Daylight glinted on wide eyes, then a second face, this one more animal than human, glanced out anxiously before withdrawing.

The plank snapped back into place with a crack, but the sound went unremarked by the busy men around.

*   *   *

In the evening Richard built a fire just inside the gates of the Station and racked up the generator. On the far bank, where the argonaut had died, an odd tree had grown. It shivered despite the lack of wind, and carried four small, yellow fruits, round and shiny. Richard declined to go across the river and investigate them.

Movement in the gully alerted him and he quickly strung his long bow, then nocked an arrow. Over the weeks since he had found this weapon he had become adept at its use, though the flights and heads were getting battered now and he had so far failed to make a successful arrow himself.

From the long grass he could see the gleam of light in the defensive field, and in places the glitter of the thin wires that carried the current. Water splashed, a man’s voice barked, a girl’s voice protested. Richard drew back into the grass, crouching, and soon Jason and three others appeared across the river. Jason had a small, dark-skinned girl with him, chained around her neck, her face open and frightened. She wore a thin wrap that scarcely covered her skeletal limbs.

Jason called to him and Richard came out of cover. “What do you want?”

The girl immediately closed her eyes, concentrating hard. Jason just grinned and watched the other man. His companions shifted uneasily, tugging skins around their chests. One of them kept a weather-eye on the huge bow, which Richard had drawn, the arrow turned only slightly to the side. Richard felt his arm twitch with the effort of holding the weapon, but he sensed menace in the air and was taking no chances.

Again Jason spoke. He slapped his chest, his mouth, and indicated Richard. He wanted to come over the water and talk. He wanted to bring the girl. Was that permitted?

“Just you, then. Not your friends. They must go back to the
Argo.
”

“Argo?”
Jason repeated. Richard stabbed a finger at the other three men and then towards the shore. Jason grasped the message. His friends withdrew. Jason tugged the protesting girl and they waded through the deep water, shivering as they came ashore, crouching gladly by the fire in the gateway below the menacing glare of Richard’s totem.

Closer to, when Richard met the gaze of Jason’s prisoner and saw the etched lines of experience and humour, of pain and defiance all around the sparkling eyes, the corners of her mouth, he realised that it was only her slightness that had made him think of her as a girl, rather than the subdued but still defiant young woman that she was.

Jason produced a piece of cloth and unwrapped a rare-cooked and juicy shin of mutton. It gave off an aroma of rosemary and garlic and as Jason saw the hungry look in Richard’s eyes, so Richard saw the look in the woman’s. She was starving. Jason hacked off a portion of the meat and ate it, then carved a slice for Richard, who took it and consumed it with gusto. The woman accepted a small slice, behaving as if she were surprised to be offered such a treat. There was wine too, a clay amphora containing about two pints. Jason took a long draught, then Richard, and this time he appreciated the drink, with its honeyish aftertaste and warming effect on his stomach.

“Thank you,” he said, and the woman repeated, “Thank you.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Richard went on, then frowned as the woman said, in perfect imitation, “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Jason watched her, nudged her, but she shook her head and scowled, rattling the thin length of chain with which he held her. She looked hungrily at the lamb and the big man sliced more for her, then for Richard. She chewed gratefully, dark eyes sparkling. Her skin tone suggested the Middle East. Her hair was jet black, but cropped short. Her ear-lobes gaped grotesquely with holes where heavy rings had once hung, and indeed, there was a distension in the flesh of her nostrils too. A thin covering of dark hair spread from her ankles to her knees, and bushed from below her arms. She was boyish in shape, her face seeming older than her breastless body. The wrap that covered her was purple, and the designs were of broad-headed lions, winged dragons, and sharp-beaked eagles.

“Why are you repeating what I say?” Richard asked.

“Why are you repeating what I say?”

“Are you trying to understand me?”

“Are you trying to understand me?”

“My name is Richard. What’s yours?”

“My name is Richard…” She trailed off, looked down.

Jason leaned forward expectantly, watching her. He said something and she nodded.

She murmured, “I know him now.” She looked up, brows dark, head cocked. “It’s a strange tongue. I know you though, I know how you speak. Many tongues muddled. What do you call it? Your language…”

“English. You seem to have learned it very fast.”

“I already knew it—I just had to find it. It’s a long-to-come language. They float in me like dreams. There are so many. The languages of the long-gone are easier. But I have him—you—I have you now. I have your tongue. You are Richard.”

“Yes. And you?”

“Sarinpushtam. My sad companions, below the deck of the
Argo,
call me Sarin. This is Jason.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Don’t trust him.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“I’m hungry. Please indicate that I should have more meat, or this man will deny me. He’s very cruel.”

Aware that contact had been established, Jason tightened the chain around Sarin’s neck, tugged her and growled at her. She spoke to him in his language and he glanced at Richard, nodding, then smiling grimly. He released the girl, who touched her neck tenderly and started to ask questions. He expected Sarin to translate, but the girl just watched Richard, eyes haunted. Richard pointed to the lamb and to the girl and Jason’s features darkened, but he got the message, sliced a thick piece of meat, and passed it to Sarin. He watched her impatiently as she ate it, seeming to chew longer than necessary, licking her lips exaggeratedly, closing her eyes in ecstasy when she wasn’t watching Jason carefully and tauntingly. When she had finished she wiped her fingers on the ground, looked hard at Jason and wiggled her tongue between her lips in an odd gesture. She smiled “sweetly” as Jason passed her the wine amphora, and drank so deeply from it that Richard was surprised to hear the slosh of remaining liquid when she passed it back.

“That’s better,” she said. “It will ease the pain later, when he punishes me.”

“Why will he punish you?”

“Mostly because I don’t like him and he knows it, and I make life difficult for him. Partly because I’m a woman, or what’s left of one, and ever since Medea killed his precious lover and his boys, he doesn’t much like the female sex, although he doesn’t prefer his lusty companions. He has very little choice. Boys, boy-shaped girls, and…” She sucked her fingers pointedly. “Well, I hope you don’t mind eating meat from a carcass that Jason has raped.”

She was grinning mischievously. Jason suddenly lashed out with his hand, a stinging blow to her cheek, drawing blood from the corner of her mouth. He spoke angrily, she translated quickly.

The business session had begun.

“What magic did you use to kill Peleus? And make Tisamenus disappear…”

Which one was Tisamenus, Richard wondered, but he said, “A magic that surfaces out of dreams. The dream lives in the skulls of certain men, and also in the earth. The light of the sun, and the terror of lightning, can be controlled by this magic, and made to dance at my orders.”

It was sufficiently garbled for confusion, but Richard was proud of his invention. When Sarin conveyed this information, Jason began to look hungry in a different way. Predictably he asked, “What will you trade for knowledge of this magic?”

“Nothing,” Richard said. “The magic is known only to me. The very earth in this place is at my command—” Jason had seen something that would not give the lie to this lie—“No one else can have the knowledge.”

It was some moments before Jason answered, his gaze burning into Richard. When he finally spoke it was in a whisper, and Sarin had to listen hard as she gave voice to the old man’s thoughts. “Will you come with me, then? Will you sail with me on the
Argo,
as my honoured companion, and work your magic for me? If you believe this, you’re a fool.”

It took Richard a moment to dissect Sarin’s commentary from the translation. As he glanced at her she raised her eyebrows, quickly and pointedly. He said, “No. Thank you, but the Goddess Hera directs your fortunes. You must ask her for all the magic you need.”

Jason turned his head and spat angrily. His face literally darkened as he met Richard’s gaze again. “Hera? She rations me. In some ways I’m no more than her shadow, and she dances at her own whim to make me move.” He scratched the grey stubble on his chin, smiling thinly. “But I like the tone of your magic. I like its effect. There are places I wish to go, there are treasures to acquire, achievements that would be easier with a magician like you. I will offer you a
palace.
I carry a treasure in the hold of the
Argo
with which I could buy two such places. I will give it to you.” He grinned hugely. “And gladly! Just come with me for one year. No more than that. One year. Come on—what do you say?”

Without taking his eyes from Jason, aware of the face that Sarin was pulling, Richard said, “No. This is my home. My gods watch me from the woods. The forest and myself are as one. I seek something that only I can find. My own adventure will take me deep into the wood, not onto the high sea.”

Jason was very tense, the fingers of his right hand gouging at the earth. He said, “Then I will help you find what you seek. Myself, my friends. We’ll be at your service for … two years. If you will spend just one year with me.”

“No. I must find what I seek alone. There is a god called
conscience,
and he needs to be placated.”

The word was hard for Jason (for Sarin, too, Richard noted). The argonaut came from a time when the notion of conscience was still raw-formed, still a confusion of the will of gods and predestined actions. Richard went on, “More importantly, there is a life called Alex, a life that is in limbo. Like Orpheus—”

“Orpheus? I’ll introduce you—”

“Like Orpheus, I have to enter hell to bring him out. I can only do it alone.”

Jason was angry, but he tried to hide the fury. He stood, kicked the lamb to Richard, then tugged Sarin to her feet, dragging her to the river. “You should give me the chance to help you!”

“Leave the woman here for a while!” Richard called, and he heard Sarin translate, but Jason snapped a negative and pushed the frail creature into the water ahead of him, splashing through the shallows towards the gully. As he disappeared from view, he shouted out, and Sarin’s voice echoed the words: “Perhaps your magic is not as powerful as you think!”

(ii) Dancing with Shadows

Somehow she slipped her chain, and came back to the compound after dark, huddling by the glowing embers and calling softly for Richard. He ran around the grass path, peering over the weeds until he saw who it was, then went to her, picking up one of the still-burning branches and leading her by the hand to the longhouse. She was shuddering, wincing with pain, and he wondered if it might be the defences, so he turned down the generator and indeed her agony diminished.

He had been huddled in the longhouse without a fire, but he set light to the pile of wood, now, and they sat and listened to the crackle of dry bark, watching the smoke stream up to the roof hole. There was food left, and unsurprisingly Sarin went at it like a hound. She sat cross-legged, her robe riding up her thin legs, and as the light grew with the fire Richard saw the bruising on her thighs. Distressed and disturbed for her, he reached over and tugged the cloth to conceal her wounds. Her neck was black and blue where the chain had been.

“He’s sleeping. He put me back in the hold, without the chain, but there’s a loose plank and I’m small enough to get through it. I mustn’t let him know I’m gone. It would be too terrible for the others.”

She was not the only prisoner, then. But Richard hesitated to ask her who else was locked below the deck of the
Argo.
He wanted to know more about Sarin herself. How had she grasped his language so quickly? What was her myth?

By firelight, relaxed and warm, with a friend at last, she told him about her life. To her, of course, it was a natural life that had ended abruptly when she had been taken by Jason.

She had lived in a town called Eshmun, close to a city and sacred site where the priests had ordered the construction of a great tower to reach to the gates of heaven itself. A place called Babel. As a child, she had seen her grandfather broken by the work, sent home to die once his bones had cracked and his muscles become like rags. Her father had been taken. When he too was broken by a fall, his dying words had been that from the top of the tower he had seen a place where the sun shone from every horizon.

Sarin, her mother, and sisters were now alone, and unsupported. Sarin had been six. One day they had been taken by other women, and moved up to the base of the tower itself, which was so wide, so huge, so high that it blocked the light from the west. They lived among the tents. Sarin for a while had helped prepare food for the builders, carpenters, and stonemasons. But soon she was old enough to follow her sisters into the tower itself, and climb one of the twenty flights of spiral stairs. This led to the ornamental rooms where jade lions watched over shallow pools of water, and those men with the
Vision of the Tower
came to bathe and relax, and take their various pleasures. And Sarin, for a year or more, was one of these.