“The poison of the river was too strong.” I said to them.
The man nodded dully, but the woman said. “No. You weren’t quick enough. He said you wouldn’t come with him at first, when he ran to you.”
“Hush,” the man said, “it was only a moment, and she”he dropped his voice-“was with the god!”
“What do I care for the god.” the woman suddenly screamed, catching up her dead child. “What god is he that takes away my son and leaves me nothing!”
I should have felt pity, but I felt only contempt. I knew had it been a girl she would have mourned less, and it angered me. I turned from them without a word and went away.
I lay down to sleep again, stiffly, not caring what story the
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woman would spread about me, only wanting to be free of them all, and across the blue water.
2
There was a high wind at daybreak, full of dust. The girl came as usual, bringing food. I fed the cat, the flaps of the wagon down against the grit-laden day.
Perhaps an hour later I heard the single shout, followed by others, and the noise of feet on the pebble-beach; they had sighted the boats from across the Water. I picked up the bundle I had made of my stuff, and called the cat to follow me. She jumped down and stalked after me to the brink.
The wind had a color now-grayish yellow like the land. The dust whirled and flared around me, making it difficult to see very much, but I was glad of the shireen for it protected me completely. The others had wound cloths about their mouths, and pulled the hoods low over their eyes. I could just make out the faint, far-off shapes on the dust-smudged blueness, and wondered how the men had seen anything. Then I heard the low-pitched, nasal moaning of a horn. This had been their warning, though I had not heard it in the wagon.
It was almost an hour’s watch, there on the shore, while they struggled toward us over the grit-pocked river. At last they beached on the rotten soil a little way down from us, five long unpainted vessels, certainly more than the “boats” Geret’s people had called them. They were low, but raised at bow and stern into a curving swoop, roughly carved like the tail of a big fish. Each possessed a solitary sail, but these were stripped from the masts, and the single banks of oars had been in action. Now the oars lifted, were heaved upright, and men came jumping among the pebbles. They were very dark-darker than any people I had been among so far, for though there had seemed a predominance of black hair in each place I had gone through, there had been fair skins and light eyes, and, among the tribes, brown and blond hair too. The newcomers had an olive tan-almost a gray tan, as though like the wind they had picked up the color of the land. Their eyes were black-the true black, where it is impossible to tell iris from pupil. And their hair, lopped very short, often shaved totally to leave a shadowy stubble on their heads, had a bluish sheen to it I had never seen before. The other thing about them, perhaps the strangest, was the
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black, coarse clothing they wore, unrelieved by any ornament. Even among the tribes there had been a glint of color or metal here and there, and apparel had shown the individuality of its wearer. These men carried nothing, apart from short knives in their belts, and what they wore had a distinct sameness-almost like a uniform, though it was not. They did not even carry protection against the dust.
A tall shaved-head came and spoke to Geret, Oroll. and the rest waiting behind. The grim face gave nothing away. Already the rowers and the wagonmen were unloading and stacking stuff into the ships.
Finallv Geret turned around and came along the beach, looking fairly satisfied. As he got near me, he glanced up, and his face turned sour.
“I should get under cover, healer. These storms can last two or three days.”
“No need,” I said. “We shall be going across soon, will we not?”
His bulging eyes bulged more.
“You want to cross, too, do you? It’s not usual. We leave the women behind. With a guard, of course. Old Uasti never came with us.”
“I shall be crossing,” I said.
He heard the finality in my voice, and argued no more, though I saw he did not like it.
When the things were stowed and tied down, about half of the wagon men clambered aboard the five vessels, and squatted among the coils of ropes near the stern. When T eot into the fifth ship, they glanced at me uncertainly, and began to mutter a little. It came to me then that when they reached the steadings across the Water, their buyers might feast them, and provide other entertainments also. Judging by the miserable expressions of the men left behind, and the even more miserable and frustrated looks of the women, this was so. Naturally, the guests would not want their woman healer along. It did not trouble me. I felt a compulsion to cross, an almost desperate desire to reach the land beyond the river, and if they did not like it, they might choke on it.
I had taken the cat into the ship with me, but she struggled and cried, and abruptly, just as the rowers were climbing in and getting their oars ready, she scratched me, and leaped over the side onto the pebbles. There she stood quite still, staring in my face with her silver eyes, her fur on end. I felt a sense of anger and loss, and it made me aware, for the first
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time, that I knew I would not be coming back across the Water.
The crossing took nearly two days, during which the storm raged around us, angrily and without relief. The journey was monotonous-the endless creaking of oars and timbers, the slupp-slupp of the viscous water, the whistling harshness of the wind. At the midpoint of the river, when no land was visible before or behind through dust and distance, we passed by a stone block sticking some ten feet out of the blueness. It was featureless, except for the smudgy carving of the elements.
“What is that?” I asked a wagoner near to me.
He shook his head. “They call it only the Stone, healer,” he mumbled, embarrassed by my presence.
Once or twice the dark crew began a deep groaning chant-song as they strained at the oars. They spoke a different language from the wagon people, but the chant was different again, and it seemed to make no sense. I guessed it was the slurred and abbreviated version of something older.
There was no stop when night fell; the dark men rowed on. Their strength and endurance seemed strange, oddly sinister, for I was beginning to notice how blank and empty each of their faces was. They appeared almost in a trance, mindless, but I supposed their hard life had made them this way.
Late into the second day the wind dropped, and sullen clouded skies appeared. We saw the rocky rim of land we were making toward, and, in an hour, reached it. If anything, it seemed at first glance flatter and more barren than the other side beneath the Ring. A squat stone tower stood up, but that was all. Yet, once the ships were beached, we were led through a cave-mouth and down an underground slope, and emerged, minutes later, incredibly among trees.
They were thin, these trees, bent over, with twisted trunks that reminded me of the tortured rock shapes we had left behind. Black-green foliage stood high in the branches, stiff, as if carved. Beyond the trees the steading of the Dark People shambled away, enclosed on three sides by rock walls, but open to the east, where there was still a bright blue piece of the river to be seen, winding into the distance. Between the rock walls ran the thread of a stream, and on the banks of this were small patches of vegetables and grain, nourished by the water. The rest of the place was barren, except for the weird trees which stood up, here and there, among the mudbrick houses, almost like gigantic birds of prey, waiting.
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Roughly in the center of the steading stood a large building, reinforced by rough blocks set in the original mud. The roof was thatched with a stringy brown material, and just under the roof were a few hacked-out slits meant for windows. Stone uprights and lintel framed the door, and toward this went Geret, Oroll, and the dark man they had spoken with earlier.
It was not a long wait. We sat in the shelter of the trees by the unloaded goods, and three women brought us clay bowls full of water or a thick yellowish milk. These women, the only ones in evidence, were thin and scrawny, dressed in black coarse cloth like their men, their hair twisted up in knots on the top of their heads, and they, too, were sullen and silent. I did not see any children, or even any dogs or goats, the usual flotsam of such a place. It was very quiet except for an occasional snake-dry rustle from the leaves. After a time, Geret and the others emerged from the large building with another dark man, very tall, and with a collar of white stones around his neck. This apparently was their king or chief. He extended his hands and spoke gutturally to us. “You are very welcome. Tonight we will feast.” The wagon men looked pleased. I wondered what there could be here in this unlovely spot to make them glad to stay another second in it. Geret came over to me.