He paused on the way to his mother’s quarters, aware of an uproar outside. Someone was shouting in a thick drunken voice. Shokerandit ran for a side door, hip-bell clattering. A slave hastily flung back the bolts to allow him passage.
In a court overlooked by the upper windows of the mansion, a liegeman and two freemen were brandishing swords. They had cornered six dehorned phagors. One of the phagors, a gillot with thin withered dugs which spoke of years in captivity, was calling out in a hoarse voice, in Sibish, “You not to kill, you vile Sons of Freyr! This Hrl-Ichor Yhar come back belong to us, the ancipitals! Stop! Stop!” “Stop!” Shokerandit said.
The men had already killed one of the ahumans. A swordsman had disembowelled a stallun with a downward slash of his sword. Ancipital eddre lodged in their carcasses above their lungs. As Shokerandit bent over the corpse, which was still in spasm, the intestines slithered forth on a tide of yellow blood.
The mass loosened itself and began slowly to evacuate the cavern of the ribs like a concoction of soft- boiled eggs in jelly. Beige shadows ran between little glistening mounds which came creeping out of the wound like a living mass, flowing thickly over the flags and into the cracks between the flags, flowing until all poured forth, separate organs no longer distinguishable in the general exodus, leaving a hollow behind them.
Shokerandit tugged back the dead creature’s ear to expose its blaze mark.
He glared at the men.
“These are our slave ancipitals. What are you doing?”
The liegeman was scowling. “Best mind out the way, master. Orders are to kill off all phagors, whether ours or otherwise.”
The five phagors began shouting hoarsely and scrambling to get past the men, who immediately brought their swords to the ready.
“Stop. Drikstalgil, who gave you these orders?” He remembered the liegeman’s name.
Keeping one eye on the ancipitals and his sword ready, the liegeman dipped into his left pocket and brought out a folded paper.
“Secretary Evanporil issued me this this morning. Now, stand back, if you would not mind, master, or you’ll get crushed.”
He handed Shokerandit a poster, which Shokerandit flapped open with an angry gesture. It was printed in heavy black letters.
The poster announced that a New Act had been passed, in a further attempt to keep down the Plague known as the Fat Death. The Ancipital Race had been identified as the main Carrier of the Plague. All Phagors must therefore be killed. Phagor slaves must be put down. Wild Phagors should be shot on sight. A bounty would be paid of One Sib per ancipital head by the appropriate authority in each District. Henceforth, the possession of Phagors was illegal, under Penalty of Death. By Order of the Oligarch.
“Put up your swords until I give you further orders,” Shokerandit said. “No more killing till I say so. And get this corpse away from here.”
When the men reluctantly did as he instructed, Shokerandit went back into the house, marching angrily upstairs to see the secretary.
The mansion was full of ancient prints, many of them engraved by a steel process in Rivenjk, when that city had boasted an artistic colony. Most of the prints depicted scenes suitable to wild mountainous areas: hunters coming unexpectedly upon bears in clearings, bears coming unexpectedly upon hunters, stags at bay, men mounted on yelk leaping into chasms, women being stabbed in gloomy forests, lost children dying in pairs upon exposed crags.
Beside the secretary’s door was a print of a soldier-priest on guard before the very portals of the Great Wheel. He stood stiffly upright while spearing to death an immense phagor which had leaped from a hole to attack him. The engraving was entitled—the Sibish lettering executed with many a curlicue—“An Old Antagonism.”
“Very appropriate,” Shokerandit said aloud, thumped on Evanporil’s door, and entered.
The secretary was standing by his window, looking out, and enjoying a cup of pellamountain tea. He inclined his head and looked slyly at Shokerandit without speaking.
Shokerandit spread the poster out on his desk.
“You did not tell me about this when I was here earlier. How’s that?”
“You did not ask me, Master Luterin.”
“How many ancipitals do we employ on the estate?”
The secretary answered without hesitation. “Six hundred and fifteen.”
“It would be a tremendous loss to slaughter them. The new Act is not to be complied with. First, I am going into town to see what the other landlords make of it.”
Secretary Evanporil coughed behind his fingers. “I wouldn’t advise a visit to town just now. We have reports of some disturbance there.”
“What kind of disturbance?”
“The clergy, Master Luterin. The live cremation of Priest-Supreme Chubsalid has caused a great deal of disaffection. A tenner has passed since his death, and I’m given to understand that the occasion was marked this morning by the burning of an effigy of the Oligarch. Member Ebstok Esikananzi led some men to quell the display, but there has been trouble since.”
Shokerandit sat himself on the edge of the desk.
“Evanporil, tell me, do you consider that we can afford to kill over six hundred phagors out of hand?”
“That’s not for me to say, Master Luterin. I am only an administrator.”
“But the Act—it’s so arbitrary. Don’t you think so?”
“I would say, since you ask me, Master Luterin, that, if scrupulously carried out, the Act will rid Sibornal of the ancipital kind for ever. An advantage, wouldn’t you say?”
“But the immediate loss of cheap labour to us … I don’t imagine my father will be best pleased.”
“That may be, sir, but for the general good…” The secretary let the sentence hang.
“Then we will not implement the Act until my father returns. I shall write to Esikananzi and the other landlords to that effect. See that the managers are clear on that score immediately.”
Shokerandit spent the afternoon happily riding about the estate, ensuring that no more phagors were harmed. He rode out some miles to call on his father’s cousins, who had another estate in a mountainous region. With his mind full of plans, he forgot entirely about his mother.
That night he made love to Toress Lahl as usual. Something in the words he uttered, or in the way he touched her, woke a response in her. She became a different person, yielding, imaginative, fully alive. An exhilaration beyond mere happiness filled Luterin. He thought he had won a great gift. All the pains of life were worth such delight.
They spent the whole night in the closest embraces, moving slowly, moving wildly, moving scarcely at all. Their spirits and bodies were one.
Towards morning, Luterin fell asleep. He was immediately in the dreamworld.
He was walking through a sparse landscape almost bereft of trees. It was marshy underfoot. Ahead lay a frozen lake whose immensity could not be judged. It was the future: all-powerful night prevailed in a small winter during the Weyr-Winter. Neither sun was in the sky. A lumbering animal with rasping breath followed him.
It was also the past. On the shores of the lake were camped all the men who had died violently in the Battle of Isturiacha. Their wounds still remained, disfiguring them. Luterin saw Bandal Eith Lahl there, standing apart with his hands in his pockets, gazing down at the ground.
Under the ice of the lake, something gigantic was penned. He recognised that this was where the breathing came from.
The being surged forth from the ice. The ice did not break. The being was a huge woman with a lustrous black skin. She rose and rose into the sky. No one saw her but Luterin.
She cast a benevolent gaze on Luterin and said, “You will never have a woman to make you entirely happy. But there will be much happiness in the pursuit.”