Upon a sacrificial stone, lozenge-shaped, the sacrificial victim was laid, his head set in a depression carved in its leprous upper surface, directed to the west. His feet were secured in a wooden brace, pointing to the direction — now slatey with oncoming night — where the sentinels would next appear if they completed their perilous journey. Thus, in his body, with its vents and passages, the victim represented the mystic union between the two immense mysteries of human and cosmic life: as above, so, with an effort of massed will, below.
The victim had already shed its individuality. Although its eyes rolled, it made no sound, stilled as if awed by the presence of Wutra.
As the four slaves stepped back, Nahkri and Klils appeared. Over their furs they had assumed cloaks of stammel, dyed red. Their women accompanied them to the edge of the crowd, then left them to proceed alone. Their straggling rat beards for once lent solemnity to their visages; indeed their pallor matched that of the victim on whom Nahkri bent his regard as he picked up the axe. He hefted this formidable instrument. A gong was struck.
Nahkri stood there, balancing the axe in both hands, the slighter figure of his brother just behind him. As the pause lengthened, a murmur came from the crowd. There was a time for the sundering stroke: miss that time, and who knew what might befall the sentinels. The murmur expressed an almost unspoken mistrust of the two ruling brothers.
‘Strike!’ cried a voice from the massed ranks. The Hour-Whistler sounded.
‘I can’t do it,’ Nahkri said, lowering the axe. ‘I won’t do it. A fuggie, yes. Not a human, not even a Borlienian. I can’t.’
His younger brother lurched forward and grasped the instrument. ‘You coward — making us look fools before everyone. I’ll do it myself and shame you. I’ll show you who’s the better man, you queme!’
With teeth bared, he swung the axe up on his shoulder. He glared down into the stark face of the victim, which stared up from its depression as from a grave.
Klils’ muscles twitched, appearing to disobey him. The blade of the instrument signalled back the rays of sunset. Then it was lowered, and rested against the stone, while Klils leaned over the shaft, groaning.
‘I should have drunk more rathel…’
An answering groan came from the crowd. The sentinels now had their discs entangled with the unkempt horizon.
Individual voices made themselves heard.
‘They’re a couple of clowns…’
‘They listened too much to Loil Bry, I say.’
‘It was their father stuffing them full of head learning — the muscles are weakened.’
‘Have you been on the nest too much, Klils?’ That coarse shouted question drew laughter, and the sullen mood was broken. The mob closed in as Klils let the axe slip into the trampled mud.
Aoz Roon ran forward, breaking away from his fellows, and seized up the instrument. He growled like a hound, and the two brothers fell away from him, protesting feebly. They stumbled back farther, arms raised protectively, as Aoz Roon swung the axe above his head.
The suns were going down, half sunk with glory in a sea of dark. Their light was spilled like yolk from two goose eggs, drab gold, as if phagor and human blood were mingled over the stagnant waste. Bats flittered. The hunters raised their fists and cheered Aoz Roon.
Sun rays converged on the pyramid, and were split into bars of shadow by its peak. The divided lights ran precisely along the flanks of the worn stone on which the victim lay, defining its shape. The victim himself was in shadow.
The blade of the instrument of execution swung in sunlight, bit in shade.
After the clean clop of the stroke came a united sound from the crowd, a kind of echoing stroke from lungs exhaling in unison, as though all present also gave up the ghost.
The victim’s head fell severed to one side, as if kissing the confining stone. It began to drown in blood, which gushed up from the wound and spread, trickling down into the earth. It was running still as the last segment of the sentinels drowned below the horizon.
Ceremonial blood was the thing, the magic fluid that fought non-life, precious human blood. It would continue to drip throughout the night, lighting the two sentinels among the vents and passages of the original boulder, seeing them safe to another morning.
The crowd was satisfied. Bearing their torches aloft, they made their way back through the stockade to the ancient towers, which were now smoulderingly black against the cloudscape, or mottled with phantom light as the torches grew nearer.
Dathka walked by Aoz Roon, who was given respectful clearance by the crowd. ‘How could you bear to lop your own slave?’ he asked.
The older man shot him a contemptuous look. ‘There are moments of decision.’
‘But Calary…’ Oyre protested. ‘It was so frightening.’
Aoz Roon brushed his daughter’s objection aside. ‘Girls can’t understand. I filled Calary full of rungebel and rathel before the ceremony. He felt nothing. He probably still thinks he’s in the arms of some Borlienian maid.’ He laughed.
The solemnities were over. Few doubted now that Freyr and Batalix would arise on the morrow. They moved in to celebrate, to drink with extra cheer, for they had a scandal to whisper about, the scandal of the feebleheartedness of their rulers. There was no more delightful subject over mugs of pig’s counsel, before the Great Tale was retold.
But Laintal Ay was whispering to Oyre as he clutched her in the dark. ‘Did you fall in love with me when you saw me ride in on my captured stungebag?’
She put out a tongue at him. ‘Conceited! I thought you looked silly.’
He saw that the celebrations were going to have their more serious side.
VI. ‘When I Were All Befuddock…’
All he could see before him was the land rearing up, making a clear bow of horizon close at hand. The tiny springy plants underfoot stretched to that horizon and, away below him, to the valley. Laintal Ay stopped, resting with his hands on one knee, breathing heavily, and looked back. Oldorando was six days’ walk away.
The other side of the valley was bathed in a clear blue light which picked out every detail with lucidity. The sky above was slatey purple with future snowstorms. Where he stood, all was in shadow.
He resumed his upward trudge. More land emerged over the curved near horizon, black, black, unassailable. He had never been there. Farther, the top of a tower rose as the near horizon sank beneath his progress. Stone, ruined, built long ago to an Oldorando mould, with the same inward-sloping walls, and windows placed at each of the four corners on each of the floors. Only four floors stood.
At last Laintal Ay surmounted the slope. Large grey birds cropped outside the tower, which was surrounded by its own debris. Behind, the unassailable hill, enormous, its blackness lit by the slate sky. A line of rajabarals interposed themselves between him and infinity. Chill wind rattled against his teeth, so that he drew his lips together.
What was the tower doing, so far from Oldorando?
Not so far if you were a bird, not so far at all. Not so far if you were a phagor mounted on a kaidaw. No distance if you were a god.
As if to emphasise the point, the birds took off, wings clattering, flying low over the moor. He watched them until they were out of sight and he alone in the great landscape.
Oh, Shay Tal must be right. The world had once been different. When he had talked about her speech to Aoz Roon, Aoz Roon had said that such matters were not important; they could not be changed; what was important was the survival of the tribe, its unity; if Shay Tal had her way, the unity would be lost. Shay Tal said that unity was unimportant beside the truth.