Waking in discomfort, he called once more for Occula, and when she came told her to ease the itching and prickly heat tormenting him. The black girl, gazing at him gravely, assured him that all would be well if only he would do as she said. He should order the slaves to carry him into the small hall: he would find himself more comfortable there. Indeed, she assured him, for his own ease and well-being he would in general find it best always to go wherever she suggested. Complying, he felt the power of his own cunning compromised and diminished, yet felt, too, immediate relief and reassurance as she caressed and whispered to him, changed the sweat-soaked cushions and fanned him while he drank the wine she had brought.
Sometimes Dyphna or the Tonildan girl would take Occula's place, but at such times he was disturbed and fretful, for he felt at the mercy of shadows--had she conjured them?--and dared not let her be absent for long, his enigmatic comforter. All was paradox. "I am bewitched: I am not my own master," he once broke out suddenly to Terebinthia. Yet when she asked him what he meant, he was not aware that he had spoken but, queasy and restless, merely told her that he felt disinclined for supper tonight, and once more fell asleep, to dream of Occula, transformed to Frella-Tiltheh the Inscrutable, preserver and destroyer, floating with him upon dark water towards some undisclosed destination of voluptuous enjoyment and impending menace.
Bayub-Otal drained his goblet, gestured for it to be refilled and leaned back in his chair, smiling at Maia across the table. His face, in the candlelight, was flushed and a few drops of sweat glistened at his temples. During dinner the room, which was not large, had become too warm. Now that the shutters had been opened to cool it, they could hear that the rain had slackened. Light gusts of wind were blowing and the air smelt fresh. In the colonnade, below, a girl's voice, soliciting, spoke to some passer-by, who replied sharply and presumably walked on. The exchange gave Maia a pleasant sense of satisfaction.
Even if she did not care for Bayub-Otal's company, at all events she was not plying for hire on the streets of the lower city.
They had dined well, in a private room at "The Green Grove", a well-known tavern situated on the north side of the Caravan Market. "The Green Grove" catered not only for prosperous traders and merchants but also, on demand, for aristocratic customers prepared to pay for the best food and wine. During Melekril there was little in the way of custom from provincial traders and the like, and Bayub-Otal's small party--himself, Haubas, Ka-Roton and three girls--had had the benefit of the best cooking and service the house could provide. Maia, who still could not take for granted the marvel of unlimited, delicious food, had not allowed her task of cutting up Bayub-Otal's meat to interfere with doing the fullest justice to the hare soup, baked carp, stuffed lamb and succeeding dishes, and was now sitting alone with Bayub-Otal over mulled wine, figs and thrilsa. She was glad the other Urtans had taken their girls upstairs for a time, since both--strangers to her-- were prosperous shearnas a good six or seven years older than she, and neither had shown herself particularly friendly to the sixteen-year-old slave-girl. "Why couldn't he have let us bring Actynnis?", she had heard one of them whisper. "She was dying to come."
"Little slave-girls are cheaper," giggled the other, but broke off as Maia leant across to ask her for the salt.
"Did you enjoy the dinner?" asked Bayub-Otal, fanning himself with a fig leaf pulled from the basket.
"Very much, my lord," replied Maia. Then, making no attempt to suppress a belch, she laughed and added, "That's how much!"
"You'll never grow up to be a shearna at that rate."
Her task, she reminded herself, was to appear as simple and innocent as possible.
"P'raps I don't want to be a shearna."
"What would you like to be?"
Maia paused, smiling at him between the candle-flames. "There were four of us girls back home: I was the eldest, but dare say Kelsi'll be married now 'fore ever I am."
Bayub-Otal made no answer and she went on, "I told you how I used to swim in the lake--oh, sometimes for hours. It was lovely."
He pushed the candlesticks to one side, so that the light no longer lay directly between them.
"When you told me you belonged to the High Counselor, I was in two minds whether to see you again."
"It's not my fault, my lord, if I belong to the High Counselor. Fin still the same girl."
"The same girl as whom?"
"As swum in the lake."
"You won't be for long if you stay in his household. You tell him all you get to hear, I suppose--you and your black friend. That's the other use he has for you. Very serviceable, I'm sure."
A more experienced girl would have passed over the taunt. Maia felt nettled and showed it, for he had, of course, come close to the truth.
"We're not spies, my lord; we're his household girls. I shan't go telling him anything you say. If you don't believe me, why do you want my company?"
He walked across the room and closed the shutters on the dripping darkness outside. Then, turning to the slave who had waited on them and pressing a couple of coins into his hand, he said, "Bring us in some more mulled wine. After that you may go."
"You're angry," he said, when the door had closed.
"Don't make much difference, my lord, does it, whether I am or not? I'm here to do as you like."
He cracked and peeled a nut with his left hand.
"What I'd like? Then what I'd like is simply for you to listen to me for a little while: I'll tell you a story which I dare say you may not have heard, though it's certainly known to the High Counselor. Do you want to hear it?"
"Seeing as you want to tell it to me, my lord."
"When I was born, my mother was a girl little older than you are now. She came from southern Suba--the marshland delta where the Valderra runs into the Zhairgen. There are more channels there than a cat has whiskers."
Maia, forgetting her annoyance, laughed. "How many's that, then?"
He smiled back. "I don't know, but that's what they used to say when I was a child. Ah! 'When I was a child': we all love the place we come from, don't we? You loved your lake. In Suba the grass grows very tall--as tall as a man--in great swamps, with sheldin trees lining the banks of the channels. Evenings, the sun sets--oh, far away, out beyond Katria--and there are shoals of little silver fish-- margets, they're called--that leap out of the water, here and gone, like rain pattering. It's all waterways there--waterways and reeds--and the children can paddle a raft almost as soon as they can walk. The Urtans call us marsh frogs: they say that when our enemies come we dive into the water." He laughed. "So we do. People who want to be lost take a lot of finding in that country."
"Lespa of the Stars--didn't she come from there, my lord?"
"So they say. But if she did, she couldn't have been more beautiful than my mother."
He pushed the wine-flagon across to her and waited while she refilled her goblet.
"My mother was a dancer--the most famous and beautiful in all Suba; in all the empire, really. At festival-time men used to travel three, four days' journey just to see her dance. I hardly ever saw her dance, myself; but I've talked to men who did, before she was--before she was married," said Bayub-Otal with emphasis. "That's to say, before I was born, when she was at her greatest as a dancer.
"The baron of southern Suba at that time--Nor-Zavin; he's dead now--he was suspected by the Urtans--I don't know how justly-of secret dealings with Terekenalt, and he badly needed to convince the High Baron of Urtah that he was loyal to him. He sent him all sorts of gifts--unusual, singular things that they'd never seen in Urtah. He knew of my mother, of course. All Suba knew of her. So he bought her from her parents. It was a forced sale: he was a baron, and even though she wasn't a slave they had no real choice, though I suppose you could say it was a fair deal in its way. He paid them far more than she'd have fetched in the hands of men like Lalloc. It kept them in comfort for the rest of their lives." He paused. "Break up this thrilsa for me, Maia, and have some yourself."
&n
bsp; Maia did as he asked. The slave returned with the mulled wine, put it down and went out.
"Well," went on Bayub-Otal slowly, "so she was taken away--crying, I dare say--to Kendron-Urtah. And there she danced for the High Baron and his court. Do you know his name?"
"No, my lord, can't say as I do. Is he still alive?"
"Yes, he is. He's sixty-two. His name is Het-Otal-Ecachlon. At the time I'm speaking of, he was about thirty-four or thirty-five. It's--well, it's always been widely known-- that things weren't smooth or happy between him and his wife. She was a Palteshi, very well-born; it was a political marriage. Many a ruler, many a great man in that situation's found himself as badly off, I dare say.
"The High Baron fell deeply in love with my mother. Possibly that may have been Nor-Zavin's idea from the start. But then everyone in Kendron-Urtah was in love with her, really. They still speak of her: she's become a legend."
"What was her name, my lord?" asked Maia.
"Her real name was Astara. But everyone called her 'Nokomis': that means 'The Dragonfly,' you know."
"What tongue's that, then? Never Beklan."
"Old Urtan--hardly anyone speaks it now--only a few peasants up in the north. The High Baron became my mother's lover. He told her," said Bayub-Otal, "and she told me--that he'd never truly loved any other woman in his life. I suppose a lot of people would laugh at that--it's what any philanderer says, isn't it?--but my father always had the reputation of a chaste and upright man. I doubt he'd ever had any other woman apart from his wife.
"My mother loved him as deeply as he loved her; and not just because he was the High Baron, rich and powerful. She understood him. They made each other happy, that was what it came to.
"You can guess how much his wife liked the dancing-girl from Suba. If only she hadn't been a dancer, perhaps she might have been able to conceal it when she became pregnant. But of course it became plain soon enough. And one day there was an attempt on her life which nearly succeeded. My father grew afraid for her and sent her back, secretly, to Suba: not to her own village--that would have been too dangerous; but to another place, more re-mote. He used to come and visit her there as often as he could. He came alone, or else with just one trusted servant. It was known, of course, in Kendron-Urtah--or suspected, anyway--that he went to Suba. But once across the Valderra, even a High Baron can disappear and no one could tell for sure where he might be. There's another saying, you know, in Suba: 'Plenty of long grass.'
"When I was born--a boy--my father was so happy that he couldn't keep the secret, though I dare say it would have been bound to leak out anyway. He made sure I was taken every care of. There's a lot of damp and fever in Suba, of course--not good for babies, very often. I can remember him--I must have been--oh, three, I suppose-- I can smell the river-mist now--striding through the door one night after dark, covered with mud to the knees, and my mother jumping up, crying for joy. Sometimes he'd stay as long as five or six days." Bayub-Otal paused. "I've never seen two people happier together than my father and mother.
"But it was always dangerous. We used to move continually from one village to another. I'd realized that we were in danger long before I was old enough to be told in so many words. My father was always afraid, you see, that his wife would find out where my mother was living. He didn't dare have it out with her openly, because he had to do his best to stay friends with Paltesh. I suppose that makes him sound like an underhand, crafty sort of man, but he wasn't. It was simply that he had a responsibility as a ruler: he had to put the good of Urtah before anything else. A High Baron can't be like ordinary people, you know.
"As I grew older, I came to love him dearly. He kept me company every hour he could. He taught me to read-- my mother couldn't read--and how to use a bow, and to fish and hunt. Often we'd be out together all day. That was the happiest time I can ever remember."
Bayub-Otal bit his lip. "Well, I'll get on a bit. I was ten years old. It was the end of summer--burning hot and everything dry as tinder. We woke one night to find the house burning. My mother--my mother died. The servant died. People dragged me out. My hand had been trapped under a burning beam. No one knew whether or not the fire was an accident.
"I lived for the next few weeks with an old couple near-by. They were kind enough, but it was a very bad time. Then news came that my father's wife had died. It can only have been a coincidence: he'd never have harmed her. She'd been ailing for some while. I've often wondered--suppose she'd died three months earlier? Well, no good thinking about that. And a few weeks later, when the decencies had been observed, and I'd recovered--or as much as I ever will--my father brought me to Kendron-Urtah and acknowledged me as his son. He said he wasn't ashamed of having loved a woman whom he knew all his people had loved too. And I've never heard anyone in Urtah say a word against either of them from that day to this.
"My father's always been fair and just to both his sons-- my half-brother Eud-Ecachlon and me. He's never favored either of us. When Eud-Ecachlon came to be twenty-one-- that was three years after his betrothal to Fornis of Paltesh had come to nothing--I was fourteen--nearly fifteen. My father called the two of us together and made us swear by the Streels of Urtah that we'd never--"
Bayub-Otal stopped and glanced quickly at Maia, at the same time making a swift, criss-cross gesture in the air with his forefinger.
"Do you know what the Streels are?"
"No, my lord. Leastways, that's to say--"
"Yes?" His voice was sharp.
"I just know what an Urtan girl at Lalloc's said when me and Occula was there. She said something about the curse of the Streels; and then she said it was a very dreadful thing and she shouldn't have let it out. That's all I know, my lord."
"I see. Well, you can take it from me that it's a strong oath for an Urtan, to say the very least. We swore to him that we'd never be rivals for power or try to harm each other. And then he told us that Eud-Ecachlon was to inherit Urtah; everything east of the Valderra. "That's just and right," he said, "for he's my elder son and the lawful heir. And you," he said to me, "for your dear mother's sake, you're to inherit Suba; all that lies between the Valderra and the Zhairgen. Swear to me now, both of you, that you'll never go against this or try to harm each other."
"We were both glad to agree to the wishes of so good a father. Eud-Ecachlon and I, we haven't much in common; but he's never grudged me the inheritance my father promised me. And the Subans--well, they were delighted. To them I've always been 'Anda-Nokomis'--the Dragonfly's boy. The year I was sixteen I traveled over almost every mile of the province--by boat, mostly--meeting the people, getting to understand their problems and dissensions and so on, as well as a youth of that age can. I was starting as I meant to go on."
Bayub-Otal drank deeply; then got up and began pacing the room, his light, cream-colored robes swishing softly each time he turned about.
"Well, you know what happened, I dare say?"
"No, my lord. You forget, I'm only sixteen and not been long in Bekla at that. You're talking to a girl from the Tonildan Waste."
"Well, Shakkarn be thanked for that!" answered he. "Nearly seven years ago--oh, I must be careful what I say, mustn't I?"
"Why, my lord?"
"You know why. And yet," said Bayub-Otal, stopping in his walk and looking directly at Maia where she sat at the table, her cloud of golden hair framing her face and shoulders, "and yet, why should I? My feelings--the High Counselor, the Sacred Queen--they'd be stupider than oxen, wouldn't they, if they hadn't known from the start what I felt when the King of Terekenalt took Suba with their connivance?"
"When was that, then, my lord?"
"When you were about eight or nine years old. That's to say, when the Leopards came to power."
Maia recalled what Occula had told her. "When the Sacred Queen first came to Bekla, my lord?"
"Ah, yes, the Sacred Queen! Fornis of Paltesh! Have you ever seen her?"
"No, my lord, that I never."
"Well, I dare say you
will before long. She was the only daughter of the High Baron of Paltesh, and when she became Sacred Queen--when Senda-na-Say was murdered and the Leopards made Durakkon High Baron of Bekla--King Harnat crossed the Zhairgen and took Suba for Terekenalt. Fornis had told him that Baltesh would offer no resistance. In return, he was to take no further advantage of the civil disturbances caused by the Leopard revolt. It was a very good bargain--for him. He knew Urtah couldn't resist him unsupported."
Stopping beside Maia, Bayub-Otal half-sat on the edge of the table and stared down at her bleakly, covering his mutilated hand with his other sleeve.
"But if you were the rightful heir of Suba, my lord," said Maia, "then why--" She stopped, overcome with embarrassment. Would he give her the same answer as Kembri? How did he see it? she could not help wondering.
"Why haven't they killed me? That's what you mean, isn't it?"
She nodded dumbly.
"Oh, no, Maia; why bother to make a martyr, when you've already got something much better--an ineffective, contemptible loser on public display? The High Baron's bastard son, who can't even draw a bow or cut up a chicken?--a fellow not worth the killing; unless he starts making a nuisance of himself, of course. Perhaps if I were to cross the Valderra into Suba--oh, yes, if I were just to go home, as any ordinary man's free to go-- that might be grounds for putting me to death, I dare say. But the dancing-girl's dispossessed son, a man who can't even see any way to avenge his own honor, left free to kick his heels--to take to drink, perhaps, or chasing worthless girls; to be a laughing-stock behind his back--"
Maia was genuinely moved to see tears in his eyes. She put a hand on his arm.
"What's the good, my lord? Trouble--the whole world's full of trouble; worse nor yours, and mine too. But we're here in a clean, warm room. We're not hungry or cold or ill. You've money, and wine--yes, and me, too, if you want. Far as we know, neither of us is goin' to die just yet. There's thousands as that'd be more than enough for."