The Cup of the World (31 page)

She slid from her saddle and flung her arms around his waist.

‘Yes,’ she said.

And now this sloping, stony ground under her back that pressed her spine and discouraged sleep. The dark awning rippling over her in the breeze that had followed them up the valley all day; from the open end, above her feet, in meaningless distance the black mass of the mountain opposite and a few low stars above; Ulfin stirring and muttering at her side. She could feel his warmth through the folds of blankets between them. Beyond the awning, the sounds of Eridi hushing Ambrose's sleepy protests from their shelter nearby. The donkeys stirred at their tethers below the little camp. The goats were silent. The watchmen had let the fire die to embers.

‘Did Caw show you what he found on the step?’

‘No. He described it to me, but he had buried it. He did the right thing. So did you, I think. At least it will have confused them. It confused me, certainly, and others. It was a risk, nonetheless. If one of Septimus's followers—’

‘I know. Friends hid me—’

‘Don't tell me where.’

‘I was so afraid, for Ambrose above all.’

‘Those things could not come at him. All the same, it is right to be watchful.’

They lay in silence together. His hand began to stroke softly down her ribs and thigh.

‘Who is the priest, Ulfin?’

The hand stopped. ‘What? The fellow you hired into my house?’

‘No, not him. And I did not hire him, Ulfin. We agreed he should come.’

‘Jent is not a friend, remember.’

She remembered that Martin must be somewhere in these hills too. She wondered how he was faring. He might be as close as the next valley, and yet as good as a thousand miles away, for they would pass by him and never know that he was there. Their party seemed utterly alone in these vast places.

‘Who is? I believe that not all of the March is safe, either.’

‘You'll have to tell me about that.’

Aun's scornful face rose before her eyes. She wondered if there was anything she could say that would bring the two men out of danger from each other.

‘Tomorrow, Ulfin.’ He had not answered her question about the priest, either. With Ulfin beside her, that too could wait until tomorrow. But if his presence made some fears remote, it brought others closer.

‘I've heard the war is tipping against us now.’

He sighed. ‘It always has been. At the beginning, I had the – the tools you know of – to bring success despite that. If I deny myself those, then yes, it is hard to see how … This hot weather should bring a respite for a few weeks at
least. I have ordered another muster at Tarceny for my return. We must raise money. I fear we must begin to sell things we would rather not part with, such as jewels, and even your writing desk.’

‘I had thought of it already’

After a moment his hand began to move against her skin once more.

Beyond the awning Eridi was singing softly, lulling Ambrose to sleep with the tones of the Great Lament. The notes spoke of loneliness and loss, and the endless emptiness of the hills. Each one sounded as if it had been born for the first time in this great and dark corner of the world. Phaedra turned her head to listen.

‘What is it saying?’

Ulfin's hand moved upon the flesh of her thigh beneath her nightdress. He said: ‘It talks of the time when the world shrugged, and turned to stone, and the giants came. Beyah, the Mother of the World, turned her back on her people to weep for her lost child, and only the world-worm Capuu dared approach her. It may include memories of when we invaded and drove them into the hills; but there are other things, myths or happenings from an older time. Or nonsense.’ He paused. His fingers pushed slowly across the slackness of her belly to her ribs, and crept on towards her breast.

There was a cry – a man's voice. It came from somewhere above them, as they picked their way along a scrubby slope that fell to the valley floor a thousand feet below. Phaedra checked Thunder and looked about her. There was nothing to be seen among the green thorns. Her view forward
was obscured by Eridi, riding on her ass with Ambrose. She could not see Ulfin or the soldiers at the head of the party. She could not see whether they were getting ready to fight or not. The world had shrunk to the few square yards of hillside immediately above her and the vast view out across the valley to her right. Listening, trying to still Thunder (who was less use than a donkey on this ground), she felt a sort of humming in the air, as if of music played somewhere just beyond the reach of hearing.

Then the cry came again.

It was uphill, and somewhere ahead of her. It was too far away, she thought, to have been directed at them or uttered by anyone aware of their presence. There were men up there, and what they might do when they saw the party she did not know.

Eridi was moving on. Beyond, Phaedra could now see Ulfin waving them forward impatiently She kicked Thunder into motion, on up, making him pick his way among the scattered boulders and thorns while the flies of the hillside wove around his ears.

They came suddenly up to a spur of rock that rose above the main hillside and jutted out and down towards the edge of the valley. Along its back a broad path ran, six feet wide or more, downhill across their route. She could hear the music now. There were hill pipes and drums and voices intoning low notes somewhere just beyond sight. Ulfin was shooing the soldiers to keep to the track-side as the leading hillmen came into view.

Her first impression was how small they were. None of them seemed to be more than two-thirds the height of Ulfin, standing tall at her stirrup. Even Orani and Eridi, whom
she thought of as having hill-blood, were half a head above any of them. There were twenty, thirty, in a crowd, pacing down the track towards her. They bore no weapons, and seemed to be dressed in rags. Phaedra wondered for a moment whether they had seen Ulfin's party from far off and had come to meet them. Ulfin did not seem to expect them to stop. He stood to one side of their path as they came on to the steady beat of their drums.

Then the cry came again, a long and trailing sound from the lips of the leader, with his eyes half closed and his head flung back towards the sky. The pipes flowed in behind, filling the space with a simple, steady melody that Phaedra had never heard before. The procession was passing Ulfin and his soldiers with barely a second look. She watched them stalk by. They wore brown blankets and went barefoot. She saw the weathered, bird-like faces, the dark and greying hair, the skin deeply lined. They walked on down the hillside from, she guessed, some settlement above to some shrine below. Some were carrying figures on poles – gods or spirits, she supposed.

The pipes and the voices had stopped. The hillmen passed to the steady beat of the drums, sad faces, solemn faces, some that looked curiously up at her and others that stared fixedly ahead as they marched. Further uphill, a hill-man in what must have been a chief's dress had stopped to speak with Ulfin. Beside her one of the herders was explaining something to Eridi and Orani, pointing out across the valley to where the hillside opposite ended in a huge shoulder of rock and a new valley opened. Far beyond, a huge peak rose, white-capped and purple-sided with the shadows of the clouds.

‘That's her,’ the boy was saying. His hill accent was so thick that Phaedra had to strain for the meaning. ‘Beyah. She don't answer, of course.’

‘Beyaah!’ cried the voice at the head of the column. And the pipes began again. The hillmen were passing, droning in their low voices below the breath of the pipes. The leading gods of the procession were followed by bizarre and colourful figures of other gods and spirits, including a long, red worm with a crest and great eyes which needed three poles to support the length of its body. ‘Capuu, world-worm,’ the herder was saying. ‘Catches her teardrop in his teeth for the people. An' tho' she bash him one in the mouth, so he spits teeth when he come to the ground, still he don't drop the tear but lays it in front of the people an' tells them what it is. Mica-mica, uh … star-spider spin-the-night; Apta and Axapta, the twins; and Prince-Under-Sky’

A doll-sized figure of a man, hooded and in pale robes.

Prince Under Sky. Evalia, and a memory of one of that mass of futile letters from the manors of the March, when she had been searching for the priest. It might have come from somewhere near Hayley

‘Ulfin …’

He was still talking to the hill chief, and had not looked her way.

They spent the night in the huts of the hillmen. Ulfin spoke with the chiefs and translated, commenting on the hill sayings and customs, and giving advice on how to eat the food. Phaedra said little. And later, when he slept peacefully beside her, she lay awake for a long while and stared at the open door and the pale night beyond.
Be careful
, said
a voice in her mind.
Be careful
. And it was not the voice of Ulfin, but of Evalia diManey.

Opposite the village, perched on a shoulder of the far hillside where the two valleys joined, was a long, low shape of stone. It was more regular than any rock outcrop, and broke the skyline in silhouettes that spoke of roofs and even, possibly, of chimneys. Ulfin pointed it out in the morning as the sun fingered along the rim of the valley and picked it from the shade below. It was a house, and the end of their journey.

It took them most of that day to clamber down into the valley and up the far side. They finished with a long, nervous stretch on a path as wide as a rabbit track that ran for a mile along a steep hillside among the thorns and scrub. The sun was westering, but lingered on the path and warmed the air, drawing sweat and the hum of insects in little clouds about the eyes and ears. Then the path rose, the crest of the hill dropped to meet it, and they were on a finger of rock above the world.

The mountains, wrapped in their evening cloud, reared in a wide circle around her. They rose beyond the green hillside where they had spent the night in the village, and ranged before them in blues and sunset-pink snow-fields around and up to the great massif of Beyah far to her right. Immediately ahead the path dropped along the spur to a small gatehouse, with slit windows and battlements like any wealthy house of the Kingdom. Nothing moved upon its walls. Beyond it were glimpses of other buildings, marching off in a row to the end of the spur. Phaedra laughed when she saw it. To find something so
familiar in all that strange landscape was the strangest thing of all.

‘Does anyone live here?’ she called to Ulfin.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘When I am here.’ He walked forward to the gate. There was no moat or drawbridge. The path ended in the wood of the door, with the squat turrets lurking on either hand. Something flew from the gatehouse roof in a flutter of wings as he dragged the door open. There was a short, dark tunnel. Phaedra kicked Thunder forward. The gateway smelled of stone and emptiness. The hooves clattered loudly in her ears. Ulfin was waiting beyond, in a small courtyard with buildings on three sides and a low wall open to the great view of the mountains on her left hand.

‘Welcome to my house.’

‘Has it a name?’

‘I think so. But I have not found it yet.’

‘More importantly, has it water?’

‘Come and see.’

He helped her down. Taking her hand, he led her through a low colonnade opposite the gate and into another courtyard beyond.

‘Oh!’ she said.

It was a small fountain court, like Tuscolo, like Trant, like Tarceny The same colonnades, with low buildings behind them. The same fountain dribbling in the centre of it. Phaedra walked forward. She saw the same wide basin and the faded beast-carvings. Here, as in Tarceny, the body of a great snake or dragon coiled around the rim of the bowl. The water did not come in spurts, as in those other places. No pump was worked in all this deserted
place to lift the water in its steady trickle, barely clearing the lips of the rearing beast before running down its front to the wet circle of the stone.

‘Where does it come from?’

‘It is cunning. A concealed pipe runs down the hill from a cleft far up the mountainside. It rises here, not just for show but so that those in the house may know whether their water line is still intact or not. From the bowl it runs to a cistern below our feet: a good, deep reservoir so that even if foes find and cut the water the house may still stand a siege.’

Phaedra looked around. It was not, in fact, wholly like the other courts she had known. For one thing, the colonnades ran along only three sides. The fourth was open, like the forecourt. Nothing but a chest-high wall stood between the floor of the court and a sheer drop down to the hillside below. For the second, it was irregular. The open side was the longest, admitting a wide view of the mountains around to Beyah herself. The far colonnade slanted back from a round platform at the end of the court to join the rear cloisters at a broad angle. And a great stone chair rose like a throne beside the fountain. There were steps up to it, and more carvings on it. Ulfin climbed up and seated himself.

‘This place was built by people of the Kingdom,’ he said. ‘In the last wave of conquest after Talifer took Tarceny they came here. They slaughtered the leaders of the hillmen and made the villages pay tribute. But they were too few. They needed help from the Kingdom, and the princes were busy with what they already held. Their leader sat here, waiting for months, years, but no help
came. Now they are gone. And to my knowledge no man of the Kingdom has trodden here since, until Calyn and I found this place, a dozen years ago.’

He was silent for a moment, looking out at the great panorama of mountains.

‘I shall come here when all is lost,’ he said.

ere, on this knuckle of the world, they idled through the days. Great birds drifted in their lazy circles, brown-backed when they flew below the level of the walls, and black against the sky above them. Ulfin had given over most of the goats at the village as a peace-offering, but they had kept a half-dozen for milk. There were small fruits from the bushes to eat, and game upon the hillside. The water from the spring was cold as melted snow.