Loil Bry broke away from Aoz Roon’s hold. Stooping, she grasped two handfuls of mud and smeared it over her face and hair, crying as she did so. Laintal Ay and Oyre laughed with delight. It was fun to see adults doing silly things.
Although the holy man continued with the service as if nothing had happened, his face wrinkled with disgust. This miserable place, Embruddock, was known for its lack of religion. Well, their gossies would suffer, sinking through the earth to the original boulder.
Tall and old, the widow of Little Yuli ran among the crackling ice structures, through the mist, down to the frozen Voral. Geese took off in dismay before her as she went crying along the bank, a crazed hag of twenty-eight hard winters. Some of the other children laughed, until their mothers silenced them in shame.
The stricken old lady capered on the ice, with stiff, ricketty movements like a puppet. Her figure was dark grey against the greys, blues, whites of the wilderness before which all their dramas were played out. Like Loil Bry, all present there were balanced on the edge of an entropy gradient. The children’s laughter, the sorrow, the madness, even the disgust, were human expressions of a war against perpetual cold. None knew it, but that war was already tipping in their favour. Little Yuli, like his great ancestor, Yuli the Priest, founder of the tribe, had emerged from eternal dark and ice. Young Laintal Ay was a precursor of the light to come.
Loil Bry’s scandalous behaviour lent spice to the feasting that was held after the funeral. All celebrated. Little Yuli was fortunate, or accounted so, for he had a father to welcome him to the world of gossies. His former subjects celebrated not only his departure but a more worldly journey—the holy man’s return to Borlien. For that, the priest had to be well filled with rathel and barley wine, to keep out the cold on his trip home.
Slaves—they too Borlienians, but Father Bondorlonganon overlooked that—were despatched to load the sledge and harness up the yelping dogs. Laintal Ay and Oyre went along to the south gate with a merry crowd to see him off.
The priest’s face squeezed itself into something like a smile at the sight of the boy. He bent suddenly and kissed Laintal Ay on the lips.
“Power and knowledge to you, son!” he said.
Too overcome to reply, Laintal Ay lifted the toy dog in salute.
In the towers that night, over a last bottle, tales were told again of Little Yuli, and of how he and his tribe had arrived in Embruddock. And of how unwelcome they were.
As Father Bondorlonganon was drawn back, pickled, across the plain to Borlien, the clouds parted. Above him, beading the night sky, were the prodigal stars.
Among the constellations and the fixed stars was a light that crawled. Not a comet but Earth Observation Station Avernus.
From the ground below, the station appeared as no more than a point of light, casually watched by travellers and trappers as it passed overhead. Close to, it revealed itself as an irregular and complex series of units with a number of specialised functions.
The Avernus housed some five thousand men, women, children, and androids, all of the adults specialising in some aspect of the planet below. Helliconia. An Earth-like planet with particular interest for the people of Earth.
II • THE PAST THAT WAS LIKE A DREAM
Laintal Ay, overcome by warmth and fatigue, fell asleep long before the celebrations were over. The stories went on over his head, much as the winds blew about the planet, in a cold fury of possession.
The stories were of the activities of men, above all of his heroism, of the way he killed such-and-such a devil animal, of the way enemies were defeated, and in particular—on this eveninig after the burial—of how the first Yuli had come down out of darkness to found a new way of life.
Yuli captured their imaginations because he had been a holy man, yet had rejected faith in favour of his people. He had battled with and defeated gods who now had no name.