‘Everything valuable is buried in the past,’ Shay Tal said, looking down at the countenance of her dead friend. ‘This place cheated Loilanun, and cheats us. The gossies wait for us. Our lives are so circumscribed! We need to make better people just as we need to bake better loaves.’
She jumped up and flung open the worn window shutter.
Her shrewd intellect saw immediately that the academy would be mistrusted by the men of Embruddock, and by Nahkri and Klils above all. Only the callow Laintal Ay would support her, though she hoped to win over Aoz Roon and Eline Tal. She saw that whatever opposition the academy met with, she would have to fight — and that fight was necessary to give new spirit to all. She would defy the general lethargy; time had come for progress.
Inspiration moved Shay Tal. As her poor friend was buried and she stood with a hand on Laintal Ay’s shoulder, she caught the eye of Aoz Roon. She burst into speech. Her words carried wild and loud among the geysers.
‘This woman was forced to be independent. What she knew helped her. Some of us are not to be owned like slaves. We have a vision of better things. Hear what I say. Things will be different.’ They gaped at her, pleased at the novelty of her outburst.
‘You think we live at the centre of the universe. I say we live in the centre of a farmyard. Our position is so obscure that you cannot realise how obscure.
‘This I tell you all. Some disaster happened in the past, in the long past. So complete was it that no one now can explain to you what it was or how it came about. We know only that it brought darkness and cold.
‘You try to live the best you can. Good, good, live well, love one another, be kind. But don’t pretend that the disaster has nothing to do with you. It may have happened long ago, yet it infects every day of our lives. It ages us, it wears us out, it devours us, it tears our children from us, as it has torn Loilanun. It makes us not only ignorant but in love with ignorance. We’re infested with ignorance.
‘I’m going to propose a treasure hunt — a quest, if you like. A quest in which every one of us can join. I want you to be aware of our fallen state, and to maintain constant vigilance for evidence as to its nature. We have to piece together what has happened to reduce us to this chilly farmyard; then we can improve our lot, and see to it that the disaster does not befall us and our children again.
‘That’s the treasure I offer you. Knowledge. Truth. You fear it, yes. But you must seek it. You must grow to love it.
‘Seek the light!’
As children, Oyre and Laintal Ay had often explored beyond the barricades. Dotted about the wilderness were stone pillars, the insignia of old tracks, which served as perches for the large birds doing sentry duty over their domain. Together, they scrambled across forlorn ruins, skull-like remains of habitations, backbones of ancient walls, where rime scoured gate towers and age underate everything. Little the kids had cared. Their laughter echoed against these stranded anatomies.
Now the laughter was subdued, the expeditions more strained. Laintal Ay had reached puberty; he underwent the blood-drinking ceremony, and was initiated into the chase. Oyre had developed a mischievous will, and walked with a more springy tread. Their play became tentative; old charades were abandoned as carelessly as the structures they haunted, never to be reenacted.
The truce of innocence between them was ended finally when Oyre insisted that her father’s slave, Calary, come on one of their excursions. This development marked their last expedition together, though neither realised it at the time; they pretended to hunt for treasure as before.
They came on a pile of masonry from which all trace of timber had been filched. Leaves of brassimips thrust up among the remains of a monument where old skilled work sank to loam crust. Once, as children, they made this their castle: here they had been a host defying charge on charge of phagors, and had imitated the cheerful imaginary sounds of battle.
Laintal Ay was preoccupied with a more troubling panorama which unfolded in his mind. In that panorama — slightly resembling a cloud, but also seeming to be a declaration by Shay Tal, or perhaps some ancient proclamation carved on rock — he and Oyre and their reluctant slave, and Oldorando, and even the phagors and unknown creatures inhabiting the wilderness, were whirled about in a great process… but there the light of his intellect went out, to leave him wondering on the edge of a precipice at once dangerous and glamorous. He knew not what he did not know.
He stood on an eminence of the ruin, looking down at Oyre below him. She was doubled up, investigating something far removed from his concern.
‘Is it possible there was once a great city here? Could anyone rebuild it in times to come? People like us, with wealth?’
Getting no answer, he squatted on the wall, staring down at her back, and added more questions. ‘What did all the people eat? Do you think Shay Tal knows about such things? Is her treasure here?’
She, sewn into her furs, stooping, looked from above more like an animal than a girl. She was prying into an alcove among the stones, not really attending to him.
‘The priest who comes from Borlien says that Borlien was once a huge country that ruled all Oldorando farther than hawk can fly.’
He set his keen gaze across the countryside, which a thick cloud layer made tenebrous. ‘That’s nonsense.’
He knew as perhaps Oyre did not that the territory of hawks was circumscribed even more severely than that of men. Shay Tal’s address had brought to his notice other circumscriptions in life, which he now chewed over fruitlessly while scowling down at the figure below. He was vexed with Oyre, he could not say why, longing to probe her in some way, to find tongue for what lay beyond silence.
‘Come and see what I’ve found, Laintal Ay!’ Her bright dark face looked up at him. Her features had recently fined towards womanhood. He forgot his vexation and slithered down the declivitous wall to land beside her.
She had fetched from the alcove a small naked living thing, its pink rat face distorted with alarm as it wriggled in her grasp.
His hair brushed hers as he looked down at this new arrival in the world. He cupped his rougher hands round hers till their fingers were interlocked round the struggling centre.
She raised her gaze to regard him direct, her lips apart, smiling slightly. He smelt her scent. He grasped her about her waist.
But beside them stood the slave, his face showing sullen comprehension of the flame of new intuition which flew between them. Oyre moved a pace away, then pushed the baby mammal carelessly back into its nook. She scowled down at the ground.
‘Your precious Shay Tal doesn’t know everything. Father told me in confidence that he thinks she is definitely strange. Let’s go home now.’
Laintal Ay lived with Shay Tal for a while. With his parents and grandparents dead, he was severed from his childhood; but he and Dathka were now fully fledged hunters. Disinherited by his uncles, he determined to prove himself their equal. He thrived and matured early, growing up with a genial expression on his countenance. His jaw was firm, his features clear-cut. His strength and speed soon became generally noticed. Many girls cast a smiling glance on him, but he had eyes only for Aoz Roon’s daughter.
Although he was popular, something about him made people keep their distance. He had taken to heart Shay Tal’s brave words. Some said he was too conscious of his descent from the Great Yuli. He remained apart, even in company. His one close friend was Dathka Den, corpsman turned hunter, and Dathka rarely spoke, even to Laintal Ay. As someone said, Dathka was the next best thing to no-one.