A Time of Changes, Page 6

  My flow of words halted and the drainer made no attempt to renew the outpour. He murmured the phrases of absolution. I was done. He snuffed the god-candle between two fingers and rose to doff his robes. Still I knelt, weak and quivering from my draining, lost in reveries. I felt cleansed and purified, stripped of my soul’s grit and debris, and, in the music of that moment, was only dimly aware of the squalor about me. The chapel was a place of magic and the drainer was aflame with divine beauty.

  “Up,” he said, nudging me with the tip of his sandal. “Out. Off about your journeys.”

  The sound of his splintery voice doused all the wonder. I stood up, shaking my head to cure it of its new lightness, while the drainer half pushed me into the corridor. He was no longer afraid of me, that ugly little man, even though I might be a septarch’s son and could kill him with one wad of my spittle, for I had told him of my cowardice, of my forbidden hunger for Halum, of all the cheapnesses of my spirit, and that knowledge reduced me in his eyes: no man newly drained can awe his drainer.

  The rain was even worse when I left the building. Noim sat scowling in the car, his forehead pressed to the steering-stick. He looked up and tapped his wrist to tell me I had dallied too long at the godhouse.

  “Feel better now that your bladder’s empty?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “That is, did you have a good soul-pissing in there?”

  “A foul phrase, Noim.”

  “One grows blasphemous when his patience is extended too far.”

  He kicked the starter and we rolled forward. Shortly we were at the ancient walls of Salla City, by the noble tower-bedecked opening known as Glin Door, which was guarded by four sour-faced and sleepy warriors in dripping uniforms. They paid no heed to us. Noim drove through the gate and past a sign welcoming us to the Grand Salla Highway. Salla City dwindled swiftly behind us; northward we rushed toward Glin.

  13

  THE GRAND SALLA HIGHWAY passes through one of our best farming districts, the rich and fertile Plain of Nand, which each spring receives a gift of topsoil stripped from the skin of West Salla by our busy streams. At that time the septarch of the Nand district was a notorious coinclutcher, and thanks to his penury the highway was in poor repair there, so, as Halum had predicted in jest, we were hard put to wallow through the mud that clogged the road. It was good to finish with Nand and enter North Salla, where the land is a mixture of rock and sand and the people live on weeds and on scuttling things that they take from the sea. Groundcars are unusual sights in North Salla, and twice we were stoned by hungry and sullen townsfolk, who found our mere passage through their unhappy place an insult. But at least the road was free of mud.

  Noim’s father’s troops were stationed in extreme North Salla, on the lower bank of the River Huish. This is the grandest of Velada Borthan’s rivers. It begins as a hundred trifling brooks trickling down the eastern slopes of the Huishtors in the northern part of West Salla; these brooks merge in the foothills to become a swift stream, gray and turbulent, that rushes through a narrow granite canyon marked by six great steplike plunges. Emerging from those wild cascades onto its alluvial plain, the Huish proceeds more serenely on a northeastern course toward the sea, growing wider and wider in the flatlands, and splitting ultimately so that, at its broad delta, it gives itself to the ocean through eight mouths. In its rapid western reaches the Huish forms the boundary between Salla and Glin; at its placid easternmost end it divides Glin from Krell.

  For all its length the great river is unbridged, and one might think little need exists to fortify its banks against invaders from the far side. But many times in Salla’s history have the men of Glin crossed the Huish by boat to make war, and just as many times have we of Salla gone to ravage Glin; nor is the record of neighborliness between Glin and Krell any happier. So all along the Huish sprout military outposts, and generals like Luinn Condorit consume their lives studying the riverfogs for glimpses of the enemy.

  I stayed a short while at Noim’s father’s camp. The general was not much like Noim, being a large-featured, heavy man whose face, eroded by time and frustration, was like a contour map of bouldery North Salla. Not once in fifteen years had there been any significant clash along the border he guarded, and I think that idleness had chilled his soul: he said little, scowled often, turned every statement into a bitter grumble, and retreated speedily from conversation into private dreams. They must have been dreams of war; no doubt he could not glance at the river without wishing that it swarmed with the landing-craft of Glin. Since men like him surely patrol the Glin side of the river as well, it is a wonder that the border guards do not trespass on one another out of sheer boredom, every few years, and embroil our provinces in pointless conflict.

  A dull time we had of it there. Noim was bound by filial ties to call upon his father, but they had nothing to, say to one another, and the general was a stranger to me. I had told Stirron I would stay with Noim’s father until the first snow of winter fell, and I was true to that, yet luckily it was no lengthy visit I made; winter comes early in the north. On my fifth day there white sprinkles fluttered down and I was released from my self-imposed pledge.

  Ferries, shuttling between terminals in three places, link Salla to Glin except when there is war. Noim drove me to the nearest terminal one black dawn, and solemnly we embraced and made our farewells. I said I would send my address, when I had one in Glin, so that he could keep me informed of doings in Salla. He promised to look after Halum. We talked vaguely of when he and she and I would meet again; perhaps they would visit me in Glin next year, perhaps we would all three go on holiday in Manneran. We made these plans with little conviction in our voices.

  “This day of parting should never have come,” Noim said.

  “Partings lead only to reunions,” I told him jauntily.

  “Perhaps you could have come to some understanding with your brother, Kinnall—”

  “There was never hope of that.”

  “Stirron has spoken warmly of you. Is he then insincere?”

  “He means his warmth, just now. But it would not be long before it became inconvenient for him to have a brother dwelling by his side, and then embarrassing, and then impossible. A septarch sleeps best when there is no potential rival of the royal blood close at hand.”

  The ferry beckoned me with a bellow of its horn.

  I clasped Noim’s arm and we made farewells again, hurriedly. The last thing I said to him was, “When you see the septarch, tell him that his brother loves him.” Then I went aboard.

  The crossing was too quick. Less than an hour and I found myself on the alien soil of Glin. The immigration officials examined me brusquely, but they thawed at the sight of my passport, bright red to denote my place in the nobility, with a golden stripe to show that I was of the septarch’s family. At once I had my visa, good for an indefinite stay. Such officials are a gossipy sort; beyond question they were on the telephone the instant I left them, sending word to their government that a prince of Salla was in the land, and I suppose that not much later that bit of information was in the hands of Salla’s diplomatic representatives in Glin, who would relay it to my brother for his displeasure.

  Across the way from the customs shed I came upon a branch of the Covenant Bank of Glin, and changed my Salla money for the currency of the northerners. With my new funds I hired a driver to take me to the capital city, which they call Glain, half a day’s journey north of the border.

  The road was narrow and winding, and traversed a bleak countryside where winter’s touch had long ago pulled the leaves from the trees. Dirty snow was banked high. Glin is a frosty province. It was settled by men of a puritan nature, who found the living too easy in Salla, and felt that if they remained there, they might be tempted away from the Covenant; failing to reform our forefathers into greater piety, they left, crossing the Huish by rafts to hack out a livelihood in the north. Hard folk for a hard land; however poor the farming is in Salla, it is twice as unrewarding in
Glin, and they live there mainly by fishing, by manufacturing, by the jugglements of commercial dealings, and by piracy. But that my mother had sprung from Glin, I would never have chosen it for my place of exile. Not that I gained anything from my family ties.

  14

  NIGHTFALL saw me in Glain. A walled city it is, like Salla’s capital, but otherwise not much like it. Salla City has grace and power; its buildings are made of great blocks of substantial stone, black basalt and rosy granite quarried in the mountains, and its streets are wide and sweeping, affording noble vistas and splendid promenades. Apart from our custom of letting narrow slits stand in place of true windows, Salla City is an open, inviting place, the architecture of which announces to the world the boldness and self-sufficiency of its citizens. But that dismal Glain! Oh!

  Glain is fashioned of scruffy yellow brick, here and there trimmed with miserable poor pink sandstone that rubs to particles at a finger’s nudge. It has no streets, only alleyways; the houses jostle one another as if afraid that some interloper may try to slip between them if they relax their guard. An avenue in Glain would not impress a gutter in Salla. And the architects of Glain have created a city fit only for a nation of drainers, since everything is lopsided, awry, uneven, and coarse. My brother, who had once been to Glain on a diplomatic errand, had described the place to me, but I put his harsh words off to mere patriotic prejudice; now I saw that Stirron had been too kind.

  Nor were the folk of Glain more lovely than their city. On a world where suspicion and secrecy are godly virtues, one expects to find charm in short supply; yet I found the Glainish virtuous beyond all necessity. Dark clothes, dark frowns, dark souls, closed and shrunken hearts. Their speech itself displays their constipation of spirit. The language of Glin is the same as that of Salla, though the northerners have pronounced accents, clipping their syllables and shifting their vowels. That did not disturb me, but their syntax of self-effacement did. My driver, who was not a city man and therefore seemed almost friendly, left me at a hostelry where he thought I would have kind treatment, and I entered and said, “One would have a room for tonight, and for some days beyond this one, perhaps.” The innkeeper stared balefully at me as if I had said, “I would have a room,” or something equally filthy. Later I discovered that even our usual polite circumlocution seems too vain for a northerner; I should not have said, “One would have a room,” but rather, “Is there a room to be had?” At a restaurant it is wrong to say, “One will dine on thus and thus,” but rather, “These are the dishes that have been chosen.” And so on and so on, twisting everything into a cumbersome passive form to avoid the sin of acknowledging one’s own existence.

  For my ignorance the innkeeper gave me his meanest room, and charged me twice the usual tariff. By my speech I had branded myself a man of Salla; why should he be courteous? But in signing the contract for my night’s lodgings I had to show him my passport, which made him gasp when he saw that he was host to a visiting prince; he softened more than a little, asking me if I would have wine sent to my room, or maybe a buxom Glainish wench. I took the wine but declined the wench, for I was very young and overly frightened of the diseases that might lurk in foreign loins. That night I sat alone in my room, watching snowflakes drowning in a murky canal below my window, and feeling more isolated from humanity than ever before, ever since.

  15

  OVER A WEEK PASSED before I found the courage to call upon my mother’s kin. I strolled the city for hours every day, keeping my cloak wrapped close against the winds and marveling at the ugliness of all I beheld, people and structures. I located the embassy of Salla, and lurked outside it, not wishing to go in but merely cherishing the link to my homeland that the squat grim building provided. I bought heaps of cheaply printed books and read far into the night to learn something of my adopted province: there was a history of Glin, and a guidebook to the city of Glain, and an interminable epic poem dealing with the founding of the first settlements north of the Huish, and much else. I dissolved my loneliness in wine—not the wine of Glin, for none is made there, but rather the good sweet golden wine of Manneran, that they import in giant casks. I slept poorly. One night I dreamed that Stirron had died of a fit and a search was being made for me. Several times in my sleep I saw the hornfowl strike my father dead; this is a dream that still haunts me, coming twice or thrice a year. I wrote long letters to Halum and Noim, and tore them up, for they stank of self-pity. I wrote one to Stirron, begging him to forgive me for fleeing, and tore that up too. When all else failed, I asked the innkeeper for a wench. He sent me a skinny girl a year or two older than I, with odd large breasts that dangled like inflated rubber bags. “It is said you are a prince of Salla,” she declared coyly, lying down and parting her thighs. Without replying I covered her and thrust myself into her, and the size of my organ made her squeal with fear and pleasure both, and she wriggled her hips so fiercely that my seed burst from me within half a moment. I was angered at myself for that, and turned my wrath on her, pulling free and shouting, “Who told you to start moving? I wasn’t ready to have you move! I didn’t want you to!” She ran from my room still naked, terrified more, I think, by my obscenities than by my wrath. I had never said “I” in front of a woman before. But she was only a whore, after all. I soaped myself for an hour afterward. In my naïveté I feared that the innkeeper would evict me for speaking so vulgarly to her, but he said nothing. Even in Glin, one need not be polite to whores.

  I realized that there had been a strange pleasure in shouting those words at her. I yielded to curious reveries of fantasy, in which I imagined the big-breasted slut naked on my bed, while I stood over her crying, “I! I! I! I! I!” Such daydreams had the power to make my maleness stand tall. I considered going to a drainer to get rid of the dirty notion, but instead, two nights later, I asked the innkeeper for another wench, and with each jab of my body I silently cried, “I! Me! I! Me!”

  Thus I spent my patrimony in the capital of puritan Glin, wenching and drinking and loitering. When the stench of my own idleness offended me, I put down my timidity and Went to see my Glainish relatives.

  My mother had been a daughter of a prime septarch of Glin; he was dead, as was his son and successor; now his son’s son, Truis, my mother’s nephew, held the throne. I seemed too forward to me to go seeking preferment from my royal cousin directly. Truis of Glin would have to weigh matters of state as well as matters of kinship, and might not want to aid the runaway brother of Salla’s prime septarch, lest it lead him into friction with Stirron. But I had an aunt, Nioll, my mother’s younger sister, who had often been in Salla City in my mother’s lifetime, and who had held me fondly when I was a babe; would she not help me?

  She had married power to power. Her husband was the Marquis of Huish, who held great influence at the septarch’s court, and also—for in Glin it is not thought unseemly for the nobility to dabble in commerce—controlled his province’s wealthiest factor-house. These factor-houses are something akin to banks, but of another species; they lend money to brigands and merchants and lords of industry, only at ruinous rates, and always taking a slice of ownership in any enterprise they aid; thus they insinuate their tentacles into a hundred organizations and attain immense leverage in economic matters. In Salla the factor-houses were forbidden a century ago, but in Glin they thrive almost as a second government. I had no love for the system, but I preferred joining it to begging.

  Some inquiries at the inn gained me directions to the palace of the marquis. By Glainish standards it was an imposing structure of three interlocking wings beside a mirror-smooth artificial lake, in the aristocrats’ sector of the city. I made no attempt to talk my way inside; I had come prepared with a note, informing the marquise that her nephew Kinnall, the septarch’s son of Salla, was in Glain and wished the favor of an audience; he could be found at such-and-such a hostelry. I returned to my lodgings and waited, and on the third day the innkeeper, popeyed with awe, came to my room to tell me I had a visitor in the livery of the Marqu
is of Huish. Nioll had sent a car for me; I was taken to her palace, which was far more lavish within than without, and she received me in a great hall cunningly paneled with mirrors set at angles to other mirrors to create an illusion of infinity.

  She had aged greatly in the six or seven years since I had last seen her, but my amazement at her white hair and furrowed face was swallowed up in her astonishment over my transformation from tiny child to hulking man in so short a time. We embraced in the style of Glin, fingertips to fingertips; she offered condolences on the death of my father, and apologies for not having attended Stirron’s coronation; then she asked me what brought me to Glin, and I explained, and she showed no surprise. Did I propose to dwell permanently here? I did, I said. And how would I support myself? By working in the factor-house of her husband, I explained, if such a position could be procured for me. She did not act as though she found my ambition unreasonable, but merely asked if I had any skills that might recommend me to the marquis. To this I replied that I had been trained in the lawcodes of Salla (not mentioning how incomplete my training was) and might be of value in the factor-houses’s dealings with that province; also, I said, I had connections of bonding to Segvord Helalam, High Justice of the Port of Manneran, and could serve the firm well in its Manneran business; lastly, I remarked, I was young and strong and ambitious, and would place myself wholly in the service of the factor-house’s interests, for our mutual advantage. These statements seemed to sit smoothly with my aunt, and she promised to gain for me an interview with the marquis himself. I left her palace much pleased with my prospects.