Stone Spring Part 16

'I did, didn't I?' Shade tried to shake his arm free.

But Knuckle was strong. 'I made promise. Come on - priest over there.'

The snailhead priest was a skinny man who looked extraordinarily old, with a tube-like head grotesque even by snailhead standards. He grinned and waggled his tongue at Shade; it contained a plug of stone so wide he couldn't close his mouth around it.

Knuckle said, 'I told you - honour you. Today you become a truth-talker, one of us. Oh, don't look for your father. I spoke to him. He knows. Doesn't mind a little pain for you.'

Shade saw it. 'You're going to make a hole in my tongue, aren't you?'

'Clever boy. Here.' He held out a narrow flint blade, very sharp, blood-stained, and folded Shade's fingers around it. 'When priest working, squeeze hard.'

'I'll cut my palm to shreds.'

'True. But you forget other agonies . . .'

Now the priest stepped forward. Because of his own tongue plug he could barely speak, but his mime was clear enough. He had a bone needle that he would push up through Shade's tongue. That would be followed by a length of aurochs horn, narrow-tipped but quickly widening. And then would come the stone plug, as wide as Shade's thumb. The priest beckoned with one hand, holding the needle with the other, while Knuckle shoved him forward.

But a snailhead woman ran up. It was Eyelid. She had her baby on her hip, but she was pointing. 'There.' And she gabbled snailhead speech so fast Shade couldn't follow.

Knuckle screamed in anger. He immediately let go of Shade and went running.

Shade turned to see. A group of snailhead men had hold of a struggling figure. The Root and his Pretani hunters were running over too.

The man the snailheads held was Shade's brother, Gall.

For the second time that day, Shade ran after Knuckle.

At the centre of a mob, Knuckle faced Gall. Both were held back by their countrymen, snailheads and Pretani. Others were running up, even children, intoxicated by excitement, eager to see the day's latest spectacle. Kirike the Giver came running up too, pulling people away; his daughters followed, Zesi with an anguished expression on her face.

The Root forced his way through, brus.h.i.+ng lesser men aside. Shade ran after his father.

Gall was filthy, ragged. He must have been living wild for months, since the incident at the summer camp. But tracks ran down his muddy, sand-coated face, as if he had been weeping. Knuckle, the muscles in his neck distended, was screaming abuse in his face, in his own language. As he strode up, the Root roared back in the Pretani tongue.

'Enough,' Kirike cried, trying to force his way through. 'Enough! Speak in the traders' tongue, all of you. What has been happening here while I've been away? Who is this man?'

'My son,' the Root rumbled.

'I saw you were here,' Gall said, his voice thick. 'Father - I have not been far from here. I hunted. I lived as a man - but alone. And when I saw you-'

'When you saw me, what?' the Root said, silencing him. 'Did you expect me to fix the mess you have made for yourself? Did you expect me to take you home like a lost calf? What sort of a man expects that?'

Kirike asked again, 'What has happened here? Knuckle, what do you want?'

Knuckle pushed his face at Gall. 'I want to know why this man killed my brother, and then ran away.'

'Is this true?'

The Root glared at his son. 'Well?'

'Yes! Yes, I killed Gut! I can hardly deny it - all saw the spear thrown - it was a good kill, father, clean. Look at my brow. I fixed my own kill-tattoo.' There were two lines cut into his forehead now, Shade saw, one more ragged than the other, and half-healed.

But the Root showed no pleasure. 'A man does not kill for no reason. Why? What had this snailhead done to you?'

'Nothing,' Gall admitted.

'Nothing? Nothing?' Knuckle was screaming now. 'Then why kill him?'

As if goaded, Gall yelled, 'Because I could not kill my own brother!'

There was a shocked silence. Shade felt his own face burn. Zesi covered her eyes.

Kirike asked quick, incisive questions, and the truth came out. Gall had raged at the developing love between Zesi and Shade. Unable to cope with the consequences of striking down his brother, he had taken out his anger on a snailhead whose only crime had been to flirt briefly with Zesi.

The Root glared at his sons. 'Let him go.' He nodded to his hunters. 'And you, Shade, come here. Stand before your brother. Let us speak the truth. When I sent you here I knew of Kirike's two daughters. I promised the elder, Zesi, to Gall as a bride . . .'

'You might have spoken to me first,' Zesi snapped. 'What am I, a piece of meat to be traded by strangers?'

The priest held her arm, his ornamental axe gleaming on his chest.

The Root said to Shade, 'Yet you took the woman for yourself.'

Shade looked at Zesi, despairing. 'It wasn't like that-'

The Root said levelly, 'You dishonoured your brother, and yourself. You dishonoured me. And you, Gall, in your rage and your cowardice - you should have faced your brother - you took a stranger's life without purpose, and fled from the consequences. You too have dishonoured me.'

He took his sons' upper arms and held them both before him, face to face. Shade was shocked by the hatred in Gall's face - and yet this was a man who had destroyed himself, effectively, rather than take his brother's life. Gall's one act of fraternal loyalty, the only one Shade could remember in his life, even if it had come accompanied by a killing.

The Root p.r.o.nounced, 'Hear me now, all of you, you Pretani and you lesser folk. There is bad blood between my sons. That blood must be let. Otherwise it will fester. From now on I will have only one son. Only one of you will walk away from this place. Which one is up to you.'

Shade said, 'You can't-'

Gall growled, 'He can.'

The Root said, 'You others, you snailheads. You stand here and see me lose a son. Whichever of them survives, will you accept that as vengeance for your loss?'

The snailheads looked at Knuckle, who nodded, curtly.

'Then let it be done-'

And Gall's hands were immediately at Shade's throat, ma.s.sive, unbelievably powerful, crus.h.i.+ng his windpipe. Gall, taller, pressed down; Shade fought to stay standing.

The surrounding people, shocked, stood back. Zesi cried out and might have run forward, but her father and sister held her back.

But Shade still had the snailhead knife in his hand - the toy knife meant to get him through the pain of the tongue stud. He worked it in his grip, pus.h.i.+ng out the blade.

Gall, grunting with exertion, said through clenched teeth, 'Brother, I should have finished you off that day at the camp. I should have strangled you at birth-'

And Shade drove the knife into his brother's belly, under his tunic, straight into the flesh and through muscle walls, guts.

Gall grunted like a speared ox. Still he stood, though foam flecked his mouth and his eyes bulged. And still he crushed Shade's throat. Shade, unable to breathe, saw him as if at the end of a holloway, long and deep and dark.

And so Shade braced himself, and pushed the blade upwards under Gall's ribs and into his heart. Gall shuddered and groaned, and hot blood gushed over Shade's hands, arms, stomach. At last those gripping fingers released their hold.

Gall fell forward on to Shade. He was heavy, and Shade, weakened, b.l.o.o.d.y, could barely hold him. But he lowered his brother to the ground, gently, and knelt over him.

The Root glared down at them, expressionless. Then he turned and walked away.

A wider ring of people stood, shocked, their mouths wide with horror. Ana had her arms around Zesi, who could not look at Shade.

Kirike came forward. 'Come,' he said. 'We'll clean you up - we'll take care of your brother, we'll talk to your priest-'

There was a rumble, like thunder, or an immense drum. It came from out to sea. People turned to the north, to the ocean, distracted, even Kirike, even Shade.

And a single wave, almost stately, anomalously tall, came was.h.i.+ng from the sea to break high up the beach.

28.

All across the northern hemisphere tremendous ma.s.ses were on the move, as ice melted and water flowed. Under this pressure the seabeds suffered their own spasms of compression and release. Huge subsurface salt deposits, relics of previous eras of drying, s.h.i.+fted and cracked - weak points in the rocky substructure, their failure causing uplift and fracturing on the surface.

Far to the north of Etxelur the seabed was particularly unstable. As the ice had receded over Scandinavia, rivers swollen by melt.w.a.ter had eroded away whole landscapes and deposited the debris in the shallow ocean - the ruins of mountains and valleys dumped in fans and scree slopes and undersea dunes. This gigantic spill was never in equilibrium; it had been deposited too quickly for that.

Huge volumes of mud slid and settled in the deep dark. Strange weather systems gathered over the restless seabed, ocean storms whose rumbling thunder could be heard far away.

Given enough time, a more significant adjustment was inevitable.

29.

It was a half-month after the midsummer Giving that the party for the wildwood hunt gathered outside Zesi's house.

When Zesi emerged, her tied-up pack in her hands, the Pretani were already there, ready to leave. The dozen hunters, bristling with spears, were laden with sacks of salted meat and the fruit of the sea. The food was a gift from Etxelur, from Kirike. The most precious gift of all was a small sack of herbs, unguents and seeds, prepared by the priest, a souvenir of the dreaming house, sophisticated beyond anything the Pretani could produce. On a late summer morning that was already hot, the Root stood outside the house, arms folded, ma.s.sive in his skins, silent and unmoving as an oak tree. The Root would lead the walk. The Pretani would have it no other way. Kirike stood with him, talking quietly.

Shade stood by his father, face blank, eyes downcast. He wouldn't look at Zesi.

And now Jurgi the priest walked up to the party, pack on his back. Zesi felt her temper burn.

Zesi, the chosen challenger from Etxelur, was allowed one travelling companion. Her father had brusquely rejected her selection of various hard-bodied, hot-headed young men. To her horror and amazement he chose Jurgi - a priest, who had gone through none of the challenges and rites of manhood, who hunted only for exercise, who had never had a woman.

'Yet he is the one,' Kirike had said, stern and unmoving.

'It's supposed to be my choice!'

His blue eyes were bright with anger. 'You're lucky I'm allowing you to go at all. You have no control. It is said that in my absence it was as if the community was being led by a child. And by lying with the Pretani boy you brought shame on us all, and caused anger and death to be brought into the heart of the Giving - death at the midsummer solstice. You know I'm not one for omens. Pray that the little mothers are more forgiving than I am.'

'But Jurgi is scarcely a man at all!'

'He's a better human being than you'll ever be. I trust him to keep you safe, and from doing more harm.' And he had walked away, refusing to discuss it further.

Zesi had seethed. She knew better than to argue when she was beaten. But now that old anger and humiliation returned.

Jurgi wore a simple cloth tunic, leggings and boots of softened deerskin, and as well as his pack he carried a hide cloak, warm and waterproof, tied over one shoulder. He wore none of his priest's finery, his face was scrubbed clean save for the circle-and-line tattoo on his cheek, and the thick greasy blue dye in his hair had been washed out leaving it a natural brown. He looked normal until he grinned at her, showing his wooden teeth.

'Just don't shame me, priest.'

'I'll do my very best.'

A few more of the folk of Etxelur were gathering now, to see off the party. Ana came out of the house and took Zesi's hands. 'I wish you weren't doing this.'

Zesi glanced over at Shade. 'And I wish things were different. I wish Gall still breathed, disgusting fool that he was.'

'It was all the fault of the Root's scheming. We shouldn't let it come between us.'

Zesi looked hard at her sister, for the first time in a long age. Ana had always just been here, in the background of her life, not objectionable, never very interesting. But now she was growing into a woman. She was thinner, paler than Zesi - less beautiful, Zesi knew. But she was more serious, more dependable than Zesi was, probably. A better person. And in the middle of this mess, a better friend than Zesi deserved. Zesi hugged her, impulsively. 'I'm sorry.'

Ana, hesitant, hugged her back. 'What for?'

'I don't know. For all I've done, and for all the horrible things I'll do in the future, that will hurt you one way or another. For that's what I'm like, you know.'

'Well, that's true,' Ana said dryly, making Zesi laugh. 'But we'll always be sisters. No matter what we do we can't wipe that away.'

'I wish I had your wisdom.'

'And I wish I had your eyebrows. Now go, and keep safe.'

Arga came running up, followed by a bouncing Lightning. Arga was crying. 'I slept late! I nearly missed you!' She grabbed Zesi's waist, and Lightning jumped up at them. 'If you'd gone before I could say goodbye-'

'It's only a couple of months.' But Arga looked up, her round face streaked with tears, and Zesi saw that two months was a long time in such a young life. 'I'll be back before the summer is done.' Gently she pushed Arga away. 'I'll teach you dolphin riding.'

'Ha! Or I'll teach you, more like . . .'

The Root rumbled in his own tongue, 'Are we done? It would be good to get past those sand dunes yonder before the sun goes down . . .'

So they set off, the Root and his son leading the hunters, and Zesi and the priest following. The Etxelur folk waved and clapped, and for a while Arga and an excited Lightning ran alongside the little column.