The Island Under the Earth (9 page)

Castagor had made traps, though his attempts at snares had (lacking bowlines) failed, and the traps had gotten them small game. Too, his prowlings and nosings around the old stone house had uncovered a pot of something which he declared to be birdlime, and he had contrived to reconstitute it and to bring in doves and woodfowl. Rary was preparing these for the next meal while Castagor himself had gone out again — why, he did not say, but the older woman had her own ideas and was inclined to grumble.

“He may deny it,” she said, basting the birds, “but I’m sure that he’s casting auguries and doesn’t want us to see. It is a shame and a disgrace about those doctors, the way they do want to keep everything a secret from plain people …” Her mind and her talk moved on to the inevitable, but she seemed easier in her mind about it. “Darda would love to nibble one of these wings,” she said, fondly. “Every time I’ll be cutting up of a fowl she’ll snuggle up and she’ll whisper, ‘Mam … Mam … Can I have a flitter?’ — that’s what we call the wings, you know: the flitters — in our country talk. Trenny, though, he isn’t one to play favorites; long as it’s food, that’s fine with Tren. Just let me heap his plate with victuals, and watch his eyes get big.” She smiled, and Spahana smiled too, though very faintly.

Occupied with her own thoughts and fears though she was, Rary caught that faint smile, and her own, which had begun to slip, returned. “That’s right, my dearling. It’s natural that you should miss your man, and a fine man he is, and I know he’ll manage to get my youngs back to me, but you mustn’t pine and stay as still as you’ve been doing,
that’
s not natural. My own man’s a gruff sort, too, and I don’t believe” — her voice trembled slightly — “that he’s ever forgiven me for our boy’s being lame, though the Cap of Grace itself knows it wasn’t my fault; still” — she blinked — “it had to be me that set out to bring them back, for he couldn’t be spared … the animals … the crops … woods to be cut if the crop’s to be got in … work too hard and too much for
me
to do. And when I set off he put his arms around me, which I can’t remember him to have done in daylight for I don’t know how long, and he said, though I was too distracted then to pay it much mind at the time, he said, ‘Take care now, old woman, I don’t want to miss you, too.’

“You’re a foreigner, dearling, aren’t you? By your voice — Yes.”

Well though she understood the reason for the abrupt change of subject, Spahana at once withdrew into herself. Indeed, so slight had been her outward motion that she had but little far to go. And then, with a deep and sighing breath and making a great effort, she said, “I am from Caryavas.” After a pause, she said, “It is far from here.”

The other woman dipped a wooden spoon into the pot of drippings and basted the birds. Her lips moved in the evidently unfamiliar syllables. “Yes, it must be, I suppose, for I’ve never heard of it. Is it one of those places which have a king?”

Is it one of those places which have a king?

She said that it was. Did Rary ask her something further? Was she herself totally lost in her own thoughts, thus conjured up, that eventually she began to speak of them aloud? Had a spell been cast, creating Caryavas before her very eyes and drawing her back into it? — so that she seemed to guide her questioner through its streets and parks, to show her the herd of golden deer and the trees who shed (on hearing of injury to anyone) tears which were balm for those same wounds. She showed her the massy yellow walls and the blunt yellow turrets of the palace and she told her the tales and the legends and the laws: how anyone who dared speak ill of anyone within these yellow walls, unless the speaker was the king’s remembrancer and charged with just reporting, within those yellow walls had henceforth to veil his mouth and face and to go so veiled all the days of his life: how, so rare were girl twins that the king himself was charged with rearing them, and, the time they came to womanhood, would marry both of them himself: how boy twins, on the other hand, grew up under the most terrible fate which man could ever face, for one of each pair was doomed to leprosy, and it was up to each to decide which would choose to suffer for the other. She led her questioner by the hand and showed her the train of trencher-bearers whom the king sent twice a week to bring food from his own stores and kitchens to such old women as were childless widows, and the mummers and minnesingers he sent to sing and dance and play before them and to cheer their aged and sorrowed countenances. She showed her the choosing of the councillors of state: first by lot and then by ballot and then by further lot and then by further ballot, until there stood up before the king the Ten Men and the Ten Women whose council and advice he was obliged to ask. And she showed her the rose-red ships with rose-red sails which carried the king’s cargoes. Lastly she told her that if any man had been pronounced dead and yet rose to live again, he was dressed in black robes with a white mask and brought before the king to cast dice for the fate of the kingdom — and how on such occasions, since the victory of death was not to be thought of, the king played with loaded dice.

A sudden spurt of fire from a gout of grease snapped the spell. Spahana winced, her face — But in a moment it was as impassive as ever. Rary’s attention was all for the spit of birds which she had been slowly turning, turning, without either remembrance of or reflection on her action. Once more again she basted them. Again her lips moved. “So that is how it is, when there is a king,” she said, after a while. “Not always wicked, then, are they?”

“Not always.”

“And always able to keep the kingdom from death by that cunning way of casting at dice?”

“Not always.”

Rary looked at her. Then she took her hands once more, as she had done when first she met her in the litter. “Never fear,” she said.

And Spahana answered, “There is nothing left to fear.”

“Not much doubt about it, is there?” Stag held the small shoe in his hand and turned it over and around.

“No,” said Bosun. His own beard, though of slower growth than his captain’s, was gradually blurring the sharp lines of his face, and merging into the once well-defined moustachioes. The shoe was home-cobbled and without ornament. “No … That’d be about the right size, and there — You can see how it’s all worn down on the side, and that’d be where he dragged it, being lame.” He scanned the trail on either side, but it was main rocky there and showed no trace of who might have passed by. With a shrug, he thrust it into his belt.

They went on.

After a while the Bosun said, “All that’s happened to us, seems to me, we might just as well have kept to the plan we had before. Wouldn’t have been worse, I have been thinking, if we’d gone to the Lonelands.”

The face of Captain Stag flooded with color. “The change of plan was mine and you were free to follow or to forge for yourself,” he said, fiercely. He doubled his fists. “You can hoist your own sail and leave right now, if it comes to that.”

The bosun’s face had become whiter. He didn’t move. He said, “Thump me, why don’t you?” They stood where they were, and long might they have stood there, had they not heard the footfalls. One of the onagers began to bray. The silverhaired stepped slowly along. He saw them, his eyes moved, but he changed neither face nor pace. He might have gone past them altogether if the bosun had not upon a sudden thought pulled the small shoe from his belt and pushed it beneath the sixy’s nose. As though performing independently, and even as the rest of the centaur’s countenance was still impassive and abstracted, the nostrils widened and fluttered. Then the eyes seemed to clear.

“Your wvoman’z childz….”

“Not my woman. But the woman where I … where we …”

The sixy sighed, as though the inexplicable relationships between the fourlimbed male and female were more of a puzzle than he cared to be burdened with. He touched the small shoe with his nose and turned back the way he had come. Men and animals followed. The centaur spoke no words, and although Bosun and Captain, illwill subsided, wondered each what had passed between him and the young maiden-mare of the golden mane and coat … or if anything had passed … the sixy being as far as imaginable now in his grave and withdrawn mood from the lusty, randy self which had hued and halloed after her. Had he found her? Lost her? Sated himself upon her? But when at last he spoke, it was not of her.

“Here was man-stale,” he said, in a low, far-away voice.

“Where?” the men, jerked from their reveries, looked about, saw nothing. He gave a casual gesture towards a vine which snaked along the path, did not complete the gesture.

“And dthere dthe child put down a foot — ” They looked, could see nothing. The centaur gave an enormous yawn, shook his massy head till mane and beard flew from side to side, and pointed to a clump of moss on a rock. He had said something, but the words were lost in the yawn, and neither man could see anything unusual about the moss or the rock. Nevertheless, they did not doubt him, nor fear that he might be leading them into another ambush. Presently the old sixie put out both his hands and stopped, then turned around, and gestured downwards, off the path. Then he stood, impassive and indifferent. Plainly, the next move was up to them.

Stag took long looks and thought long thoughts. Hills and valleys and crags and glades and finally the far-off sea, below; above, more hills, more crags, the sky, the sun, the clouds, and that obscured, occluded corner of the sky which had in all his lifetime never moved from its place; he could no more conceive what lay behind it than he could conceive what lay behind the sky itself. “I mislike these continued delays,” he muttered. “Still … that range of hills does look familiar….” He turned to the sixy and opened his mouth and paused a moment, as though wondering how to address him, and as though remembering how he had addressed him on the occasion of giving him the wine. He cleared his throat and looked down and avoided the problem. “Where does our old house lie?” he asked. “The old Stonehouse — ” Perhaps a recollection that the name of Hobar might still rankle the centaurs kept him from adding it. And once again the sixy made his indifferent gesture. Stag gave a grunt of satisfaction. “I was right, then. ‘Twouldn’t be out of our way. Onward, then.”

Zorbinand the Thief had long had it in his mind — and not in his mind alone, but in a little scroll which he kept, marked with diurnal, semanal, and mensual signs, as well as tiny pictographs whose meaning was known only to Zorbinand the Thief — to rob the house of Dellatindílla the eunuch comprador. To this end he had devoted much time and research, such as espying over the walls for several years what went on in the courtyards and counting and noting all the hangings which were taken out to be cleaned and aired and thus estimating, by the several times several sorts of hangings, how many rooms there might be in the eunuch’s apartments, and how large each one was. He counted windows and he counted airshafts and when the opportunities occurred (which were not often) he had fascinated the house-churls and whispered in their ears, as they squatted, slack-faced and drooling, “Draw me a sketch of a house,” and thrust sharp sticks into their obedient hands: of course they had not always sketched the right house and they had not always sketched correctly, but much of the information fitted into the master plan which Zorbinand the Thief was preparing. He had even overcome his natural fastidiousness and made love to the oldest and ugliest of the eunuch’s she-servants, who, by virtue of that very ugliness and age, plus their master’s hateful distaste for anything which smacked of ordinary sexuality, did not often find love lurking for them; and afterwards he had simply let them babble of the wonders of the house. And after they had gone he had recorded the data in coded pictures and symbols in his little scroll.

He was aware that the comprador had periods of hyperactivity which were generally followed by periods of non-appearance, and he had made notes of how long each had lasted and how often they had occurred and at what intervals. And so, eventually, he set his date and retired into his rooms and began to fast. It was astonishing how quickly the fat and rufflebearded Zorbinand — Zorbinand of the curly hair — began to diminish in weight and girth; but then Zorbinand had studied many things in many places for many years, and he knew the secrets of rapid gain as well as those of rapid reducing; he knew which foods merely put on flesh and fat and which added strength without doing so. When he had reached a desired point he took razor and bowl and hot water and saponiferous plants and shaved every hair off his body and plucked out his eyelashes. After this he took neither food nor drink of any kind for one day and then half a day, only sucking on a piece of a certain kind of bark which dulled the pain of hunger without dispelling that degree of sharpening of the senses which a certain degree of hunger produces. And last of all he rubbed himself with oil, from the small depression on the exact center of his shaven head to the long, long toes of his supple feet.

Thus prepared, he glanced at the sky and he sniffed the air. It was not quite yet time, and he spent the interval in performing a set of exercises, some of which he had learned as a lad in the College of Thieves in the Metropolis and some of which he had devised himself — such as hooking his heels into the smallest possible niche and hanging for the longest possible time and standing on one finger in the narrowest possible space without touching the sides.

It must not be thought that Zorbinand had been able to carry out this entire program entirely without distraction. His wife, for example, had at the first been continually interrupting him with demands such as “Zorbinand, steal me a tortoiseshell comb set with precious stones,” and “Zorbinand, I haven’t a thing to wear; please steal me five ells of green tree-silk and five ells of fine white linen,” and “Zorbinand, go down to the market and steal me five measures of pudding barley, a half a measure of fat meat, and a half a measure of pure oil to brown it in”; until, finally, he was obliged to fascinate her, and left her, slack-faced and drooling, in her corner.

The hour was now late. Zorbinand gave the air one final and all-encompassing sniff and snuff, turned, walked to the opposite wall, ran, thrust out his right hand, turned a tumble on his index finger, and was out the window more lightly than a cat. Once out, he braked his descent and sank slowly to the ground. He landed in the shadow of the great dove-cote, which at this hour had arrived at its most convenient angle, and he followed that shadow, running backwards, lightly, on the balls of his feet, so that he should be facing in the direction from which anyone was likeliest to come, if anyone were to come. In the space of time which it takes a bird to flap a wing he was not only unseen, he was unseeable.