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CHAPTER 14

The girl whose sister Akiva had helped in childbirth was there. She sat alone on a rock by a fire, sharpening the blade of a hoe.

"Hello, priest," she said when he came near.

The edge of her blade shone. Her white palms caught its light between them. As Akiva sat down before her, two sparrows alighted near the stone, one on either side.

"How have you--?" he began.

"I ran away. I'm going back, though, when I have one of their heads to bring. Unless they kill me."

He avoided her gaze. "You are--" What? The dreadful birth, the obedience he had commanded there, the girl talking blindly of murder, defied a name. "I had not expected to see you," he said.

"Why not? They might cut me up into pieces; I might cut them." Her smile vanished. "Oh, priest, the Defenders of Faith wouldn't have me." At this, the sparrows flew off.

She has spoken by inspiration, Akiva thought. "How did you get here?"

"I ran away. To the Middle Plains," she said.

One would have had to run every step of the way to have been in the Middle Plains with the Defenders and gotten back by now. "How did you cross the river?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered impatiently. "I guess I sort of floated. I sat on some thatch."

It seemed impossible, yet she was here. She was no vision...she looked up and tested the blade's edge. He saw. "The best are taken and the worst are taken. You were spared to keep simple good in the world," he said.

She nodded.

"There is...no one with you?"

"Nope. Rat-eaters got them all." She smiled again. "I'll fight anyway. The Defenders are coming here and I'll fight the Itscriye devils with them. When Pahid comes, he'll see my back."

"Fight! Fight!" people were shouting. A little crowd rattled between the walls of two houses, knocking occasionally into the posts. Two big men circled one another, each beset by friends trying to hold him back, both ranting that they would brook no insult. When he turned again to the stone where the girl had been sitting, she was gone.

* *

So many, Clark kept thinking. He scanned everyone who came near him, testing their sweat for a minor metabolite of Ecclesiam purpuream to see whether they had the drug in their systems. It was everywhere. Verloringers, villagers, Krup and the road slaves and the various wandering people who seemed to have been drawn to Ebur by the bridge, all of them fairly oozed the stuff. He tried subject after subject, dabbing so quickly at their arms with his microcollector that none of them even noticed his touch. Paula, Fuego, even his own sweat were contaminated. "There are a lot of worlds and a lot of people," he muttered to Fuego. "Room for a lot of--" He felt sick to his stomach and finished, "--of poisons," because he had lost his train of thought. He found Ecclesiam in a little stream running near the village and traces in the soil and even, very faintly, in the morning dew.

Remembering his experimental problems with the worms on Reshebora, he kept an eye out for people who didn't metabolize Ecclesiam normally. They would be the controls. He found exactly one such person: Neshar. The boy's sweat was pure, though his blood was full of Ecclesiam. Clark asked him for a urine sample, but Neshar seemed deeply offended by the request so Clark, supposing the boy was aware of his peculiarity and, like most boys, unhappy to be singled out, gave up.

While Clark fretted over Ecclesiam, Paula and Tiyar worried about Pahid. They scouted the foothills all the way to the Burning Mountains, old broken peaks that divided the eastern country from the Middle Plains. Mountaintops fallen ages ago into valleys or crumbled in century-long landslides made soft outcroppings above the slowly rising terrain or filled the gorges where rivulets fell now and then in echoing cascades, throwing rainbows on the rocks and flowers. Big-leaved nut trees and dark evergreens cleft the bedrock in chasms, from the bases of which slow streams carried the fertile water to marshes and pools below.

In ages past, boulders shaken loose by earthquakes had struck the granite foothills, shattered and sent off sparks that burned the mountain meadows, and in these ancient bruises grew marshes full of snails and butterflies and thick foliage in spongy soil. Now and then a wild creature started up from the brush, saw Paula and Tiyar, and ran away.

Pahid would be marching along the road with his footsoldiers, stopping often to wait for supply wagons and to terrorize the towns in his way. They might meet him wherever they liked. They chose the widest clearing they could find, a gap between two hills where the road ran through. From the summits they would be able to look down on what was happening below, assuming the Daybreak contingent could surround Pahid's forces. If they could lure him into the grassy bottom, they might catapult stones on their enemy from all sides; otherwise they must fight at close range in the woody hillsides where the horses could be panicked.

A stone ledge that stuck out from the hill near where the enemy would enter caused Paula some hesitation.

"Boobytrap it," Tiyar said.

"Too obvious." She was watching a fat bird run down the road in the plain, flapping its little wings noisily. It hopped into the air and flew out of sight.

"Use simple traps, of course. Poisons, and snares that are easily deployed and present no problems of technological immiscibility."

"No. I know better than to go around boobytrapping the countryside and so do you. We'll just have to beat them to the ledge, take it and hold it. Is that so difficult?"

For several fine, cool days, refugees kept coming and coming to Ebur. Their makeshift hovels in the flower-strewn grass around the village soon become a little city where, fanned by mountain breezes scented with pine, they suffered from wounds and infections and fevers and fought like dogs over anything a person could eat. Their numbers kept increasing, and so did the speed with which they came, until by the end of the fifth day people were coming in from all directions at a run, children and elders dragged along flying and bumping over the roads. Wide eyes and mouths drawn tight gave them the intent expressions of people looking for some sign of what to do, where to go, to whom to turn.

Information was at a premium. Whoever spoke with authority commanded an instant audience, and the wilder the lies the better. Pahid was an ogre weaned on human flesh; Itscriye had been submerged in the sea. Sprites tricked farmers into eating stones that turned them into trees. A man swore he had seen forests with human hands and faces, trees that shrieked with hunger and snatched birds from their branches to eat them alive.

Refugees from the Itscriyites ran generally west, while those fleeing the Defenders went eastward. Two such groups nearly collided a little way from the village, one shouting, "Rat-eaters!" and the other, "Pahid!"

Clark was going to an outlying part of the camp to examine a little boy who had heartworms when he saw the two mobs standing apart, screaming at the tops of their lungs that the Itscriyites would eat anyone in their path and Pahid would murder anyone found outdoors, such was the Lir Temple's mercy to the dispossessed. Tiyar and Paula ran out of the crowd, heading full tilt along the road to the Red River.

"The bridge! The bridge!" Paula yelled in Eyimalian.

Clark whirled about and began to run also, and behind him came the Verloringers. It was a long way. He cursed himself as he ran, breathing down to his toes and trying not to let his heart race. He should have known that in the end he would follow his common sense and decide to pull down the bridge, and he should have done so, instead of wasting hours in useless argument with Tiyar. This is the stream, the tide of lives that Sevit taught us cannot fail, Tiyar had told them, and instead of folding their arms and saying no, they had allowed themselves to be pulled into debate after debate about which side was manipulating history for temporary gain. Endless debate--Clark glanced up as he ran. Vermillion clouds gathered around an orange sun. A black V of low-flying birds glided through the zenith. He looked up again and again at the beautiful clouds, stumbled and fell. As he scrambled in the dust, feet overtook him and trampled him, running heedlessly over his back and legs and head. Others caught under his ankles or stubbed into his sides and people fell on him, rolling, yelling and cursing. He got up and ran on, struggling to the front of the crowd. At the brink of a steep hill he left them behind and hurtled into the river valley.

The shrubs around the bridge on the far side had been trampled flat, but the roadway on the Ebur side bore only a few dozen footprints. Planks had been torn from the floor of the bridge and blood stains on the holes showed that people had fallen through. Had they drowned? Clark later realized that he hadn't looked into the river, only at the bridge. Among the supporting tree limbs and ropes and vines were human bodies.

The herbalist of Ebur and three friends, all dead, lay draped over the trunks and vines where they had been climbing up to pull the vital pin.

Clark looked again at the opposite shore. Uprooted bushes and trees, parts of houses, mats and bones were strewn about. From the number of animals and birds around the mess, he supposed there were bodies, too. It was another bloody footstep in their passage. Violence gathered everywhere their motion ceased an instant, here perhaps just long enough to fight over who would be first across.

Tiyar ran onto the bridge to keep Paula from destroying it. Once there, he did nothing useful but angel-fought dreamily, his equipment set to its clumsiest position. Scared, Clark thought.

The herbalist had died somewhere along a severed tree that rose at a shallow angle from the water, and slid down the trunk until her arm caught on a limb. Muddy water licked the soles of her feet. Her face, rsting with one cheek on the bark, seemed to look across a little stretch of mossy rock at Paula.

Clark let himself down the bank and they clambered over the stones to gather up the body. "Heart to Fea, soul to earth," Paula whispered. She gave two sighs that sounded to him like death rattles, once when they picked her up and once when they slipped coming ashore and nearly dropped her.

"It doesn't look as though very many have come over yet," he offered.

"Not even memories," she said, apparently thinking aloud. "Smoke in darkness." She leaned back and cupped her hands to her mouth to yell, "Tiyar! Where did they go?"

Up on the bridge, Tiyar waved his hands at the trees on the riverbank. Suddenly, Clark remembered that the herbalist had a daughter, probably on her way here now. People were coming over the hill from the roadway. They moved slowly in the twilight, tense and ugly against the deep-hued sky and soft green of the forest. When they saw the bridge, they paused, and some dropped back while others pressed forward. As the people began to see the four bodies, the families of the dead were lightly turned aside.

Three fish jumped at once in the river. Paula started. Her features seemed to weaken, but she made no sound. "Be calm. Don't think about it," Clark told her.

"She was me," Paula said, but her mind was trained, like his, and she diverted her thoughts.

"--there is yet light," Tiyar was calling to the crowd on the ridge. He turned one palm to the opposite bank and pointed with the other hand at the woods behind his listeners. "There are many more who will soon cross. And Pahid cannot be evaded. Therefore, we must prepare ourselves before nightfall." People milled back and forth on the ridge, then regathered, facing west. Akiva was speaking to them. Tiyar shouted louder, but already the crowd had thinned as people went back to Ebur.

It was almost dark, the river still glimmering and the breeze from the east growing stronger. Clark stopped on his way up to the bridge to listen. This was Feyling's song, the gentle hum of a continent's trees all lightly rustling in the sunset wind that whispered over each hill and plain and valley. It did sing, almost. "You hear words in the air," he said to Paula.

"It sounds like: ay, ay, ay."

She climbed up the bank in time to hear Akiva say, "--and don't be afraid. These are important times. Remember, the moons will join tonight."

Tiyar lingered on the bridge when the crowd had gone home.

"You'd better get off of here," Clark told him.

"No. We must have a way of retreat."

Clark let himself over the side and down to the jointed pin.

"Don't touch it," Tiyar said.

Clark straightened the pin. Tiyar aimed a Puro at him.

"Cut that out," Clark said.

Tiyar fired. The projectile cut so close by Clark's head that he smelled burnt hair.

He had only to pull out the pin. Surely he could do it, even in the time he would take to die if Tiyar fired agian. Surely one life was little enough for the thousands who would be saved if the Itscriyites were prevented from crossing. And there was a chance Tiyar would not fire.

"Climb up," Tiyar said.

Clark could not bring himself to refuse. He looked past the underside of the bridge at the great broad-winged fisherbirds swooping in to their nests along the shore. Though he might never have come here and still been happy, and though he would soon leave and not miss it, he somehow could not part from that place yet. He waited while one after another of the birds vanished among the trees and the greater moon rose from the ridge on the western shore, and finally he climbed up over the rail. Tiyar handed him the Puro, muzzle toward himself, and for a moment Clark was tempted to shoot him, but he opened it instead. There was nothing inside.

"I embarrassed you," Tiyar said. "I am sorry. But if I fought with you, you might have fallen from the bridge and drowned."

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TIYAR REMEMBERS THIS MOMENT. CONTINUE.....................

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