In the dung-scented confinement of the room, they were little more than grey outlines, but Shay Tal detected something amiss in Loilanun’s hunched appearance. Her unexpected arrival suggested trouble.
‘Loilanun, are you ill?’ She whispered the words.
‘Weary, just weary. Shay Tal, throughout this night, I spoke with my mother’s gossie.’
‘You spoke with Loil Bry! She’s there already… What did she say?’
‘They’re all there, even now, thousands of them, below our feet, waiting for us… It’s frightening to think of them.’ Loilanun was shivering. Shay Tal put an arm round the older woman and led her over to the bed on the floor, where they sat huddled together. Outside, geese honked. The two women turned their faces to each other, seeking signs of comfort.
‘It’s not the first time I’ve been in pauk since she died,’ Loilanun said. ‘I never found her before — just a blank down there where she should be — scratched emptiness… My grandmother’s fessup was wailing for attention. It’s so lonely down there…’
‘Where’s Laintal Ay?’
‘Oh, he’s out on the hunt,’ she said dismissively, immediately returning to her theme. ‘So many of them, drifting, and I don’t believe they talk to each other. Why should the dead hate each other, Shay Tal? We don’t hate each other — do we?’
‘You’re upset. Come on, we’ll go to work and get something to eat.’
In the grey light filtering in, Loilanun looked quite like her mother. ‘Maybe they have nothing to say to each other. They’re always so desperate to talk to the living. So was my poor mother.’
She began to weep. Shay Tal hugged her, while looking round to see if the sleeper stirred.
‘We ought to go, Loilanun. We’ll be late.’
‘Mother was so different when she appeared… so different, poor shade. All that lovely dignity she had in life was gone. She has started to… curl up. Oh, Shay Tal, I dread to think what it will be like to be down there permanently…’
This last remark was forced from her in a loud voice. Shay Tal’s mother rolled over and grunted. The pigs below grunted.
The Hour-Whistler blew. It was time to be at work. Arm in arm, they shuffled downstairs. Shay Tal called the pigs softly by name to quiet them. The air was frosty as they leaned on the door to close it, feeling the rime on its panels powder under their fingers. In the greys and sludges of early morning, other figures made for the women’s house, armless as they clutched blankets about their shoulders.
As they moved among the anonymous shapes, Loilanun said to her companion, ‘Loil Bry’s gossie told me of her long love for my father. She said many things about men and women and their relationships I don’t understand. She said cruel things about my man, now dead.’
‘You never spoke to him?’
Loilanun evaded the question. ‘Mother would scarcely let me get in a word. How can the dead be so emotional? Isn’t it terrible? She hates me. Everything gone but emotion, like a disease. She said a man and a woman together made one whole person — I don’t understand. I told her I didn’t understand. I had to stop her talking.’
‘You told your mother’s gossie to stop talking?’
‘Don’t look so shocked. My man used to beat me. I was scared of him…’
She was panting and lost her voice. They crowded thankfully into the warmth of the house. The soak pit of the tannery steamed. In niches, thick candles made from goose fat burned with a sound like hair being ripped from hide. Twenty-odd women were gathered there, yawning and scratching themselves.
Shay Tal and Loilanun ate lumps of bread together, and took their ration of rathel, or pig’s counsel, before moving over to one of the pestles. The older woman, now her face could be seen more clearly, looked ghastly, with hollows under her eyes and her hair matted.
‘Did the gossie tell you anything useful? Anything to help? Did she say anything about Laintal Ay?’
‘She said we must collect knowledge. Respect knowledge. She scorned me.’ Talking through her face full of bread, she added, ‘She said knowledge was more important than food. Well, she said it was food. Probably she was confused — not being used to it down there. It’s hard to understand all they say…’
As the supervisor appeared, they moved over to the grain.
Shay Tal looked sideways at her friend, the hollows of whose face were now filled with an ashen light from the eastern window. ‘Knowledge can’t be food. However much we knew, we’d still have to grind the corn for the village.’
‘When Mother was alive, she showed me a drawing of a machine powered by the wind. It ground the grain and women didn’t lift a finger, she said. The wind did the women’s work.’
‘The men wouldn’t care for that,’ Shay Tal said, with a laugh.
Despite her caution, Shay Tal’s resolution hardened; she became the most extreme of the women in defying what was unthinkingly accepted.
Her special work was in the boilery. Here, the flour was kneaded with animal fat and salt, and steamed over troughs of rapid-flowing water from the hot underground springs. When the dark brown loaves were ready, they were cooled, and a lean girl named Vry distributed them to everyone in Oldorando. Shay Tal was the expert of this process; her loaves had the reputation of tasting better than those of any other cook.
Now she saw mysterious perspectives beyond the loaves of bread. Routine no longer contented her, and her manner became more remote. When Loilanun fell ill of a wasting disease, Shay Tal took her and Laintal Ay into her house, despite her father’s protests, and patiently tended the older woman. They talked together for hours. Sometimes Laintal Ay listened; more often, he grew bored and went off on his own.
Shay Tal began to pass ideas to the other women in the boilery. She talked in particular to Vry, who was at a malleable age. She talked about the human preference for truth over lies as resembling the need for light above dark. The women listened, muttering uneasily.
And not only the women. In her dark furs, Shay Tal had a majesty felt by the men, too — Laintal Ay, among others. With her proud bearing went proud talk. Both the looks and the talk attracted Aoz Roon. He would listen and argue. He released a vein of flirtatiousness in Shay Tal, who responded to his air of authority. She approved of his support of Dathka against Nahkri; but she allowed him no liberties. Her own liberty depended on allowing him none.
The weeks passed, and great storms roared over the towers of Embruddock. Loilanun’s voice grew weaker, and one afternoon she passed away. In her illness, she had transmitted some of Loil Bry’s knowledge to Shay Tal and to other women who came to see her. She made the past real to them, and all that she said was filtered through Shay Tal’s dark imagination.
Loilanun, as she faded, helped Shay Tal to found what they called the academy. The academy was intended for women; there they would seek together to be something other than drudges. Many of the drudges stood wailing by her deathbed until Shay Tal, in a fit of impatience, threw them out.
‘We can observe the stars,’ Vry said, raising her waiflike face. ‘Have you ever studied how they move on regular paths? I would like to understand the stars better.’