Voices (8 page)

I found Gry and her husband in the stableyard, with the lion and the horses and Gudit and Sosta. Sosta was neglecting her sewing to swoon around Caspro, Gudit was saddling the tall red horse, and Gry and Caspro were arguing. They weren't angry with each other, but they weren't in agreement. Lero was not in their hearts, as we say. "You can't possibly go there by yourself," Gry was saying, and he was saying, "You can't possibly go there with me," and it was not the first time either had said it.

He turned to me. For a moment I felt almost as swoony as Sosta, thinking that this was the man who had made the poem that I had read all night and that had remade my soul. That confusion went away at
once. This was Orrec Caspro all right, only not the poet Caspro but the man Orrec, a worried man arguing with his wife, a man who took everything terribly seriously, our guest, whom I liked. "You can tell us, Memer," he said. "People saw Gry in the marketplace yesterday, saw her with Shetar—hundreds of people—isn't that true.?"

"Of course it is," Gry said before I could speak. "But nobody saw inside the wagon! Did they, Memer?"

"Yes," I said to him, and "I don't think so," to her.

"So," she said, "your wife hid in the wagon in the marketplace, and now stays indoors in the house, like a virtuous woman. And your servant the lion trainer emerges from the wagon and comes with you to the Palace."

He was obstinately shaking his head.

"Orrec, I travelled as a man with you for two months all over Asudar! What on earth makes it impossible now?"

"You'll be recognised. They saw you, Gry. They saw you as a woman."

"All unbelievers look alike. And the Alds don't see women, anyhow."

"They see women with lions who frighten their horses!"

"Orrec, I am coming with you."

He was so distressed that she went to him and held him, pleading and reassuring. "You know nobody in Asudar ever saw I was a woman except that old witch at the oasis, and she laughed about it. Remember? They won't know, they won't see, they can't see. I will not let you go alone. I can't. You can't. You need Shetar. And Shetar needs me. Let me go dress now—there's plenty of time. I won't ride, you ride and we'll walk with you, there'll be plenty of time. Won't there, Memer? How far is it to the Palace?"

"Four street crossings and three bridges."

"See? I'll be back in no time. Don't let him go without me!" she said to me and Gudit and Sosta and perhaps to the horse, and she ran off to the back of the house, Shetar loping along with her.

Orrec walked to the gateway of the court and stood there straight and stiff, his back turned to us all. I felt sorry for him.

"Stands to reason," Gudit said. "Murderous snakes they are in that Palace what they call it. Our Council House it was. Get over there, you!" The tall red horse looked at him with mild reproach and moved politely to the left.

"What a beauty you are," I said to the horse, for he was. I patted his neck. "Brandy?"

"Branty," Orrec said, coming back to us with an air of dignified defeat that you could see went right to Sosta's heart.

"Ohhh," she said to Orrec, and then trying to cover it up, "oh, can I, can I get you a..." but she couldn't think of anything to get him.

"He's a good old fellow," Orrec said, taking up Branty's reins. He made as if to mount, but Gudit said, "Hold on, wait a minute, have to look to the cinch here," getting between him and the horse and throwing the stirrup up over the saddle.

Orrec gave up, and stood as patiently as the horse.

"Have you had him a long time?" I asked, trying to make conversation and feeling as foolish as Sosta.

"He's well over twenty. Time he had a rest from travelling. And Star as well." He smiled a little sadly. "We left the Uplands together—Branty and me, Star and Gry. And Coaly. Our dog. A good dog. Gry trained her."

That got Gudit started off on the followhounds that used to live at Galvamand and he was still talking about them when Gry reappeared. She wore breeches
and a rough tunic. Men in Ansul wear their hair long, tied back, so she had merely combed out her braid and put on a worn black velvet cap. She had somehow darkened or roughened her chin. She had become a fellow of twenty-five or so, quick-eyed, shy, and sullen. "So, are we ready?" she said, and her soft, burry voice had changed, too, becoming hoarse.

Sosta was staring at her, rapt. "Who are you?" she asked.

Gry rolled her eyes and said, "Chy the lion tamer. So, Orrec?"

He gazed at her, shrugged, laughed a little, and swung up onto the horse. "Come on, then!" he said and set right off, not looking back. She and the lion followed behind him. She looked back at me as they passed through the gate, and winked.

"But where did he come from?" Sosta asked.

"Merciful Ennu go with them, that nest of murderous rats and snakes they're going to," Gudit said hollowly, shuffling into the stable.

I went in to look after the gods and the ancestors and find out what Ista needed from the market.

Gudit told me that a messenger had come that morning from the Council House, which the Alds called the Palace of the Gand, to say Orrec Caspro was to wait upon the Gand before midday. Not saying please or why or anything, of course. So they went, and so we waited. It was late enough when they came back that I'd had plenty of time to worry. I was out sitting on the edge of the dry basin of the Oracle Fountain in front of the house when I saw them coming along our street from the south, Orrec afoot leading the horse, Chy the lion tamer beside him, and the lion padding along behind with a bored expression. I ran to meet
them. "It went well, it went well," Orrec said, and Chy said, "Well enough."

Gudit was at the stableyard gate to take Branty—having horses in the stable was such joy to him he wouldn't let anybody else look after them for a moment—and Chy said to me, "Come up with us." In the Master's room, though she hadn't yet changed her clothes or washed her face, she became Gry again. I asked if they were hungry, but they said no, the Gand had given them food and drink. "Did they let you under the roof?" I asked. "Did they let Shetar in?" I didn't want to be curious about anything the Alds did, but I was. Nobody I knew had ever been inside the Council House or the barracks or seen how the Gand and the Alds lived there, for all of Council Hill was always guarded and swarming with soldiers.

"Tell Memer about it while I get out of these clothes," Gry said, and Orrec told me, making a tale of it; he couldn't help it.

The Alds had set up tents as well as barracks, tents of the fashion they use travelling in their deserts. The tent in Council Square was high and very large, as large as a big house, all of red cloth with golden trimming and banners. It appeared, said Orrec, that the Gand actually governed from this tent rather than from the Council House, at least now that the rains had ceased. The tent would be sumptuously furnished, and would have movable, carved screens making rooms of a kind within it—Orrec had been made welcome in such great tents in his travels in Asudar. But here he was not brought under even that cloth roof. He was invited to sit on a light folding stool on a carpet not far from the open doorway of the tent.

Branty had been taken to the stables by a groom who handled him as if he were made of glass. The lion tamer and the lion stood some yards behind Orrec, with Ald officers guarding them. They, like Orrec, were offered paper parasols to protect them from the sun. "I got one on account of Shetar," Gry called to us from the dressing room. "They respect lions. But they'll throw away the parasols, because we used them and we're unclean."

They were offered refreshments at once, and a bowl of water was brought for Shetar. After they had waited about half an hour, the Gand emerged from the tent with a retinue of courtiers and officers. He greeted Orrec most graciously, calling him prince of poets and welcoming him to Asudar.

"Asudar!" I burst out. "This is Ansul!" Then I apologised for interrupting.

"Where the Ald is is the desert," Orrec said mildly; I don't know whether they were his own words or an Ald saying.

The Gand Ioratth, he said, was a man of sixty or more, splendidly dressed in robes of linen inwoven with gold thread in the fashion of Asudar, with the wide, peaked hat that only Ald noblemen can wear. His manners were affable and his talk was shrewd and lively. He sat with Orrec and conversed about poetry: at first they spoke of the great epics of Asudar, but he also wanted to know about what he called the western makers. His interest was real, his questions intelligent. He invited Orrec to come regularly to the Palace to recite from his own work and that of other makers. It would, he said, give him and his court much pleasure and instruction. He spoke as one prince to another, inviting, not ordering.

Some of the courtiers and officers joined in the conversation after a while, and like the Gand showed a thorough knowledge of their own epics and a curiosity, even a hunger, to hear poetry and story. They complimented Orrec, saying he was a fountain in the desert to them.

Others were less friendly. The Gand's son, Iddor, kept noticeably apart, paying no attention to the talk about poetry, standing inside the open tent with a group of priests and officers and chatting with them, until they grew so noisy that the Gand silenced them with a reproof. After that Iddor scowled and said nothing.

The Gand asked that the lion be brought to him, so Chy obliged, and Shetar did her useful trick, as Orrec called it: facing the Gand, she stretched out her front paws and bowed her head down between them, as cats do when they stretch—"doing obeisance." This pleased everybody very much, and Shetar had to do it several times, which was fine with her, since she got a small treat each time, even though it was her fasting day. Iddor came forward and wanted to play with her, dangling his feathered cap, which she ignored, and asking how strong she was, did she kill live prey, had she bitten people, had she killed a man, and so on. Chy the lion tamer answered all his questions respectfully, and had Shetar do obeisance to him. But Shetar yawned at him after doing a rather perfunctory bow.

"An unbeliever should not be permitted to keep a lion of Asudar," Iddor said to his father, who replied, "But who will take the lion from the master of the
lion?"—evidently a proverb, neatly applied. At that, Iddor started to tease Shetar, provoking her by shouting and starting at her as if in attack. Shetar ignored him absolutely. The Gand, when he realised what his son was doing, stood up in a rage, told him he was shaming the hospitality of his house and offending the majesty of the lion, and ordered him to leave.

"The majesty of the lion," Gry repeated, sitting down with us at last, her face clean, and dressed now in her silk shirt and trousers—"I like that."

"But I don't like what went on between the Gand and his son," Orrec said. "A snake's nest, as Gudit said. It will take careful treading. The Gand, though, he's a very interesting man."

He's the tyrant that ruined and enslaved us, I thought, but didn't say.

"The Waylord is right," Orrec went on. "The Alds are camped in Ansul like soldiers on the march. They seem amazingly ignorant of how people live here, who they are, what they do. And the Gand is bored with ignorance. I think he's seen that he'll probably finish out his life here and might as well make the best of it. But on the other hand, the people of the city don't know anything about the Alds."

"Why should we?" I said. I couldn't stop myself.

"We say in the Uplands, it takes a mouse to really know the cat," said Gry.

"I don't want to know people who spit on my gods and call us unclean. I call them filth. Look—look at my lord! Look what they did to him! Do you think he was born with his hands broken?"

"Ah, Memer," Gry said, and she reached out to me, but I pulled away. I said, "You can go to what they call their palace and eat their food if you like and tell them your poetry, but I'd kill every Ald in Ansul if I could."

Then I turned away and broke into tears, because I had ruined everything and didn't deserve their confidence.

I tried to leave the room, but Orrec stopped me.

"Memer, listen," he said, "listen. Forgive our ignorance. We are your guests. We ask your pardon."

That brought me out of my stupid crying. I wiped my eyes and said, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry, sorry," Gry whispered, and I let her take my hand and sit down with me on the windowseat. "We know so little. Of you, of your lord, of Ansul. But I know as you do that we were brought together here by more than chance."

"By Lero," I said.

"By a horse, and a lion, and Lero," she said. "I will trust you, Memer."

"I will trust you," I said to them both.

"Tell us who you are, then. We need to know one another! Tell us who the Waylord is—or what he was, before the Alds came. Was he the lord of the city?"

"We didn't have any lords."

I tried to pull myself together to answer properly, as I did when the Waylord asked me, "A little further, please, Memer?" I said, "We elected a council to govern the city. All the cities on the Ansul Coast did. The citizens voted for the councillors. And the councils named the waylords. Waylords travelled among the cities and arranged trade so that the towns and the cities got what they needed from each other. And they kept merchants from cheating and usury, if they could."

"It's not a hereditary title, then?"

I shook my head. "You were a waylord for ten years. And ten more if your council named you again. Then somebody else took over. Anybody could be a waylord. But you had to have money of your own or from your city. You had to entertain the merchants and the factors and the other waylords, and travel all the time—even down into Sundraman, to talk with the silk merchants and the government there. It cost a lot. But Galvamand was a rich house, then. And people of the city helped. It was an honor, a great honor, being a waylord. So we still call him that. In honor. Although it means nothing now."

I almost broke out in tears again. My weakness, my lack of control, scared me and made me angry, and the anger helped steady me.

"All that was before I was born. I only know it because people have told me and I've read the histories."