The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog

The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog Doris Lessing A fascinating novel of love and ecology from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.Doris Lessing returns to the world of visionary fiction, first visited in her Canopus in Argos quintet of novels in the 1980s, and in ‘Mara and Dann’, to which this is a sequel, in 1999.The Earth’s climate has changed – it is colder than ever before – and Dann, four in the first book, is now grown up and a general, and the man to whom everyone looks for guidance and leadership.Lessing’s novel charts his adventures across the frozen wastes of the north, a journey that will eventually lead to the discovery of a secret library. The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog Doris Lessing Table of Contents Cover Page (#uff2d9330-023e-5914-b8f6-1a99b96b8648) Title Page (#u66a47ad7-1e45-5968-847a-1e740794a3a5) The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (#u07d44323-20db-527d-a725-10aae58dd52f) By the same author (#litres_trial_promo) Read On (#litres_trial_promo) The Grass is Singing (#litres_trial_promo) The Golden Notebook (#litres_trial_promo) The Good Terrorist (#litres_trial_promo) Love, Again (#litres_trial_promo) The Fifth Child (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (#ulink_788fc212-a6ab-5407-84cf-daceb45ddb45) A slight move to one side or the other – a mere hand’s breadth – and Dann must fall. He lay stretched, like a diver, and his fingers curled over an extremity of crumbling black rock, the tip of a shelf whose underside had been blasted away by wind and water, and which from a distance looked like a dark finger pointing at the cataract pouring over an edge of black rocks to become, at once, mists and spray that whirled and shifted, hypnotising him with movement: a cliff of thundering white. He was deaf with the noise, and fancied he heard voices calling to him from the thunder, though he knew they were the cries of seabirds. Lengths of white falling water filled all that side of his vision, and then if he shifted his gaze to look ahead, lifting his head from his arm, far away across the gulf he was poised above, those low clouds were snow and ice. White, white on white, and he was breathing a fresh sea air that cleared his lungs of the dull damp smell of the Centre. It was only when he left the Centre and its marshy edges he realised how he hated the smell of the place, and the look of the marshy land, all greys and drab greens and the flat gleam of water. He came here as much for the fresh lively smell as for the swirling movement that filled him with energy. White, and black, and above him the blue of a cold sky. But if he shifted to the very tip of the spit of rock, letting his arms dangle on either side of it, and looked down, far below there was the glint and glide of water, made blue by the sky. This tip of rock could crumble and fall and he with it: the thought exhilarated him. That water pouring over the rocks, he knew it; he had been swimming in the sea only a day ago. Salt and cold and strong it was, and the sea far below there was salty and cold but not so strong because of the water that was gushing everywhere from the snow and ice that began where the fall of sea water ended. The water down there was sea water diluted. Yet he saw the seabirds come from the waves to the rocky barrier and let themselves float down to the other sea, the low sea down there, so it was sea enough for them. And how did fish get down from the dangerous salty ocean to that other low sea? he had wondered, thinking that surely fish brought by the waves to the edge of the ocean and the rocks, and dashed over to fall in the white cascades, could not survive such a long gasping whirling descent. But whether they did or not, there was another way fish arrived in the lower sea. The falling masses of water span off foam, masses of it, in clumps many times the size of Dann. And in those clumps travelled fish. Now the booming of the water was augmented by a loud crashing: he knew what that was. A boulder was being dislodged from the rocky crest and was bounding down, invisible to him behind the white mists, bouncing off hidden projections, and would land out of sight down there, in the water of this end of the Middle Sea. He knew that this chasm, this cleft, so enormous he could easily think it endless, had been a sea. He had known it on the old maps and globes in Chelops. At the Farm he had even tried to copy what was in his mind, on a globe that had drawn on it the Middle Sea, with below, Ifrik, and above it the ice masses of Yerrup, white all the way up to an edge of blue. He had stretched white leather from a goat over a frame of twigs. It was rough, but on it he and Mara had recreated that old Mahondi globe. Ahead, where he stared, more imagined than seen, because he knew it was there, were the regions of the Ice. And it was melting. It was melting into the ocean, and falling down the sides of the Middle Sea to where the sea was, at its bottom. All along a cliffy edge too vast for him to take in, ice water was pouring down into the sea there. So how long would it take to fill? He knew that once it had been full, and the surface of Middle Sea was not far below where he was now. Dann tried to imagine this great hole full of water, a sea almost at the level of the Western Sea – tried, but it was no good. So insistent and present was what he saw – the steep dark sides of the chasm going down to the present Middle Sea, streaked with grass and vegetation. For weeks he had come to lie here, drawn by the fascination of the place, watching the thundering fall of water, listening, letting his lungs fill with clean salty air. He had looked around and across and down, and wondered about the lower sea. But now he didn’t wonder, he knew: he had been down there himself. During those weeks somebody watching the young man, who was more of a youth, slight, light and from a distance easily mistaken for a bird, must have wondered at his carelessness in that dangerous place. Gusts and swirls of wind came with the mists, and the spray and clumps of foam, but he did not attempt caution – he might sit up, or even dangle his legs over the edge, and stretch out his arms. Was he welcoming the blast that could take him over? And then that was what happened: he was lifted and flung down, landing on a long slippery slope of rock and sliding down it to stop in a grassy cleft. Below him was another descent of wet rock, and again the wind flung him down. These rocks were like glass, and were the work of water: the rub of water over stretches of time he could not begin to imagine had made them. He had slid, his boniness and the thin skin over his bones protected by his thick garments. As he slid, or even rolled, he looked for evidences of a path or at least a way of easier descent, and believed he was catching glimpses of some kind of a path. He knew – he had been told – that people did make this long dangerous descent, because of the good-tasting fish in the clean lower sea. As he clung to a bush, a sizeable clump of foam came to rest beside him, caught on the bush. Inside it he saw little fish wriggling. If they didn’t reach water they wouldn’t be wriggling for long. Dann stuck his arm right into the foam so that it clung to him, and he went on sliding and falling, down, down, aided by the slippery rocks, and then he was there, by the surface of the lower sea, which like its progenitor, the Western Sea – or part progenitor, the water from the icy cliffs supplied part – was lively, with little waves, but not like the great rollers of the Western Sea. He flung the mass of foam off him and it lay rocking on the water and he saw little coloured fish swim off into the waves. From down here, the great fall of white water away up on his left hand was half the sky. He found an amenable rock, and crouched there, peering down into the sea, this Middle Sea, which had once filled all this vast space – he knew he was seeing only a tiny portion of its western end – and so he was crouching here on what had been once near the bottom. And would be again. When? So much water pouring in, salt water and fresh ice, and yet behind him the cliffy sides stretched up – and up. Dann took off his clothes and slid into the water, ready to fish, but with nothing but his ten fingers. There were a lot of fish of all sizes. He swam among them and they crowded around, jostling and nudging, not afraid at all. He embraced a big scarlet fish, stuck his fingers into its gills and wrestled it up and out of the water on to a flat rock where it panted its way to death. He had his knife in his belt. He cut the fish into strips and stuck them on a bush to be cured by the sun. He had nothing like a bag or a satchel with him, and it was a big fish. He stayed for some time, until the sun had gone down behind the great cliff of falling water, and he was in danger of having to climb up that dangerous rocky edge in the dark. He made his way up in the cracks between the rocks. It took a long time and it was dark when he reached the top. He made his way to the Centre, and to his room, avoiding the old woman and the servitors, accepting the heavy damp of the air into his lungs with difficulty. And next day early he went down the side of the Middle Sea, but this time with a sack to put the strips of fish in. But the fish had gone. Someone, something, had taken it. Alert, looking around, trying to be small and invisible, Dann squatted behind a rock and waited. He could see nothing, nobody. He decided not to swim and try for another fish in case this invisible thief should stop him getting out. The sun was straight above him, and it was hot. He did try a quick dip close to the shore and from the water he saw on a bush strands of coarse white hair. The hair was high on the bush. A largish animal, then. He climbed back up the sides of the chasm to his spit of rock and thought how different it was, believing yourself alone, and then knowing you are not, perhaps being observed. When he had arrived at the Centre from the Farm – it seemed to him now a pretty long time ago, at least half a sun’s cycle – he had found that the man, who called himself Prince Felix, was dead and the old woman, Felissa, mad enough to believe that he had returned as a conqueror with the intention of setting her on a throne. She had an old piece of metal, a shield, from who knew how long ago, with a picture on it of a woman on a high chair, while people knelt around her. Dann wanted to find out from her what the metal was, what time it had come from, from which room in the museums she had taken it, but she only wailed and complained that he was of the royal blood and must assume his rightful place – at her side. He had left her to it. Then, from the Farm had come after him a youth who had turned up there, looking for work. His name was Griot and Dann remembered those greenish eyes always following him, from as far back as Agre. He had been a soldier, under Dann, who had been General Dann of Agre. The fact was, he had followed Dann from Agre to the Farm, and from there to the Centre. Griot had said to Dann, ‘When you didn’t come back to the Farm, I thought you might have something for me here.’ Here meaning the Centre, but his use of the word suggested larger purposes. The two young men had stood together, observing each other, one with need, and Dann wanting to get away. Not that he disliked Griot: he had never much noticed him. A thickset young man, with a strong face, and greenish eyes that had to be noticed because eyes that colour were not often seen. Dann told him the Centre had plenty of space in it. Already all kinds of people sheltered there. It was much bigger than he and Mara had believed when they were here. That it was very large had to be obvious from a glance, but it was only when you knew it that the extent and the intricacy of the place became evident. Rooms led from rooms, rooms above rooms were reached by tiny wriggling stairs, half-ruinous areas that had been abandoned but now had inhabitants who did not want to be noticed, who kept out of sight. Beyond the encircling great stone wall on the side of the Middle Sea were buildings, made long after the main Centre was established, but they were sinking into the marshes. That was why it was easy to see the Centre as smaller than it was. It had been built on the highest place for a long way around, but as the tundra melted, the marshes encroached and the waters crept up. In some places the edges of the Centre were half under water. How long had they been like this? What use asking, when the locals might say of a city whose roofs you could see shining as the boats passed over it, ‘My grandfather said that his grandfather remembered this city when the roofs were above water.’ Only such a short time ago he and Mara had been here together, and he could swear that he remembered dry where now there was wet. Perhaps things were speeding up? Once it had taken generations for a city to sink down into the mud, but now, much less? He had said to Griot that he, Dann, was not looking for company. It was hard to say this into that face full of expectation. Griot had said that he knew a lot of crafts, had many skills; Dann would not find him a liability. Dann asked Griot where he had learned so much, and heard a history not unlike his own: Griot had spent his life on the run, from wars and invasions, as much as from the drought. Dann said there was something valuable Griot could do. Every day more refugees came to the Centre from the wars that were going on in the east, in countries Dann had scarcely heard of. He had had to acknowledge that there was more to the world than Ifrik. On the goatskin where he had sketched his map of the world was Ifrik, in the centre place, and above it the Middle Sea and above that Yerrup, with its ice masses. And, to the west, the Western Sea. That was about it. In his mind now were shadowy eastward extensions of this central Ifrik, filled with images of war. Griot could teach these people his skills, keep them out of mischief and stop them pilfering from the museums. Griot was pleased. He smiled: Dann had not seen this serious youth smile. Then he watched Griot on a level, comparatively dry area with about a hundred people, not all youths, or men, for there were women among the refugees. He was teaching them to drill, march, run. They were using weapons. From the museums? Dann said to Griot, ‘People trained to be soldiers will want to fight, have you thought of that?’ And there on that stubborn face was an acknowledgement that Dann had said more than he thought he had. Griot nodded, and stared straight into Dann’s eyes. What a look that was, asking for so much. ‘You were a general in Agre,’ said Griot softly. ‘Yes, I was, and I remember you, but I am not looking for more fighting.’ And now Dann found himself being examined, most thoroughly, by those unsettling eyes. Griot did not have to say I don’t believe you. ‘It’s true, Griot.’ It certainly was odd, the way people again and again expected him to step into some space in their imaginations, fit into their dreams. He said, ‘Griot, when Mara and I came here we found two lunatic old people who wanted us to start a new dynasty of Mahondis. They called us prince and princess. They saw us as a breeding pair. They saw me as someone who would create an army.’ Griot’s eyes did not leave Dann’s face: he was searching for what Dann was not saying. ‘I mean it,’ said Dann. ‘Yes, I was a general, and yes, I was, I believe, good at it. But I’ve seen too much of killing and people being made captives.’ ‘Why did the old people want you to have an army? What for?’ ‘Oh, they were batty. To conquer everything. To subdue all of Tundra – I don’t know.’ Griot said, ‘There is always killing, and people running from wars. And new wars.’ Dann said nothing and Griot asked – and clearly this was the moment of definition for him, ‘And so what do you want to do – sir?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Dann. ‘No, I really don’t.’ Griot said nothing. He had taken in all that Dann had said, but his conclusions were not what Dann would have approved of. At last Griot said, ‘Very well. I’ll do what I can with the refugees. Some of them are not bad. They can teach me a thing or two sometimes. And I’m arranging the food supplies. There is plenty of good fish down in the Bottom Sea – not the muddy marsh rubbish around here. And I shall get some seed grain that I saw growing in water. And there’s a marsh pig we can breed.’ Dann saw that Griot was taking on the tasks that he had expected Dann to do. ‘Thank you, Griot,’ he then said. Griot saluted, and left. That salute – Dann certainly did not like it. It was establishing some kind of contract between them that Griot needed. The encounter between the two young men had been some weeks ago. Dann tried not to run into Griot or even to notice much what he was doing. On this day after he had noticed the hair of the animal stuck on the bush, he was lying stretched on his rocky spit, and thinking of the Farm and of Kira, who was pregnant with his child. It would be born soon. And Mara’s child too. Interesting that Griot had not expected him to return to the Farm, yet Griot had stayed there long enough to learn what was going on, and who belonged to whom. That was a joke; Mara belonged to Shabis. And so Dann wouldn’t go back. He thought of Kira and it was painful. How he did love her – and how he did hate her. Love? Well, he loved Mara, so he should not use that same word for Kira. He was fascinated by Kira. Her voice, her way of moving, that slow, lazy, seductive walk … but to be with her was to be humiliated. He thought of how, on the night before he left, she had stretched out her naked foot – and she was as good as naked – and said in that sweet singing voice of hers, ‘Come here, Dann.’ They had been quarrelling. They always quarrelled. He had stood there, a few paces away, and looked at her, and wanted to do what she wanted, which was to get on his hands and knees and crawl to her. She half lay, holding out her naked foot. She was pregnant, but it was too early to show. She needed him to lick her foot. And he desired to, he craved to, he longed to give himself up to her and stop fighting. But he could not do it. She smiled at him, her malicious smile that always made him feel she had cut him with a whip, she had wiggled her toes, and said, ‘Come, Dann’ – and he had turned and run out. He picked up some clothes, some essentials – and left the Farm. He did not say goodbye to Mara because he could not bear to. Dann lay on his shelf of unsafe rock and knew it was time he left. He was so restless. Well, hadn’t he spent nearly all his life on his feet, walking, walking, one foot after another? He had to be in motion again. But to leave here, leave the Centre, meant going even further away from Mara. She was a few days from here, on the shores of the Western Sea which he was observing for hours of every day from this perch of his, seeing it crash over the rocks down in sheets of foam to the Bottom Sea. The waves he saw break into spray were the same as licked the coast below the Farm. But he had to leave. He told himself it was because of Griot, always spying on him, and now there was this new animal down there, watching him too. He stretched and craned over the edge of his rock finger to see if somewhere was an animal, perhaps expecting more fish from him. For a few minutes he fancied he saw something big and white, but it was too far away. If it was watching Dann, it would be hiding itself. The thought made him feel prickly and caged. No, he must leave, he must go, he would leave Mara. ‘Oh, Mara,’ he whispered, and then shouted her name into the noisy water. It seemed to him her face was in the patterns the water made. A rainbow spanned the Rocky Gates and little rainbows were spinning off and away with the clumps of foam. The air seemed full of light, and noisy movements – and Mara. He was heavy with sorrow, felt he could easily roll off that rocky protuberance and let himself fall. He was leaving Kira too – wasn’t he? But he scarcely ever thought of her and the child she was having. His. She had not even bothered to tell him she was pregnant. ‘I don’t think I’d get much of a look in with that child, even if I were a good father, hanging about, waiting for the birth – which must be soon.’ So he excused himself. ‘And besides, I know Mara will see that my child will be looked after, and there is Shabis, and Leta and Donna and probably other people by now.’ It made him uncomfortable, saying my child, though it was. The thought of Kira was like a barrier between him and this soon to be born infant. He stood up at the very end of the rocky finger and dared the wind to swirl him off. His tunic filled with air, his trousers slapped against his legs: his clothes were willing him to fall, to fly, and he felt the tug and lift of the wind over his whole body. He stood there, upright, not falling, so he left the rock and went to the Centre. There he visited the old woman who screeched at him, and so did the servant: two demented old women, in a bad-smelling room, berating him. He chose a few things, put them in his old sack, found Griot and told him he would be away for a while. How those sharp green eyes did peer into his face – his thoughts. And how much he, Dann, was relying on Griot, and that made him feel even more caged and confined. ‘Would you ever return to the Farm, Griot?’ ‘No.’ Dann waited. ‘It’s Kira. She wanted me to be her servant.’ ‘Yes,’ said Dann. ‘I’ve had enough of that.’ ‘Yes,’ said Dann, who had been a slave – and worse. ‘She is a cruel woman,’ said Griot, lowering his voice, as if she might overhear. ‘Yes,’ said Dann. ‘So, you’ll be off, then?’ Dann had gone a few paces when he felt the need to turn, and he did, and saw Griot’s betrayed face. But had he made Griot any promises? He had not. ‘Griot, I’ll be back.’ ‘When?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Dann made himself march away from Griot’s need. Dann set off around the edge of the Middle Sea, going east. He had meant to walk right round the edges of the Bottom Sea, but that was before he had seen it, so rough, often piled with detritus from rockfalls. Up here on the top edge there was a road, more of a track, running between the precipitate fall to the water and the marshes. He had left the stale mouldy smell of the Centre, but the smell of the marshes was as bad: rotting vegetation and stagnant water. He walked, thinking of Mara and the past. His mind was full of Mara, and of sorrow, though he had missed the news of her death. She had died giving birth. The messenger from the Farm had come running to the Centre, but Dann had left. Griot had thought of sending the messenger after Dann, but said that Dann was away. Griot was glad he did not have to tell Dann. During his time at the Farm he had observed, had taken everything in. He knew how close Mara and Dann were: one had only to see them together. He knew the two had walked all the way up Ifrik through many dangers; his own experience had told him what a bond shared danger was. He had seen that Dann suffered, because Mara belonged not to him but to her husband Shabis. To tell Dann his sister was dead: he was in no hurry to do it. Dann had wanted to leave the Centre – leave the past – because of the weight of sorrow on him, which he believed he understood. It was natural. Of course he was bereft, but he would get over it. He had no intention of subsiding into unhappiness. No, when he got walking, really moving, he would be better. But he had not got into his stride, his rhythm: it was what he needed, the effortlessness of it, when legs and body were in the swing of the moment, a time different from what ruled ordinary sitting, lying, moving about – never tiring. A drug it was, he supposed, to walk like that, walking at its best, as he had done sometimes with Mara, when they were into their stride. But Mara was not here with him. He kept at it, thinking of Mara; well, when did he not? She was always there with him, the thought of her, like the reminder of a beating heart: I am here, here, here. But she wasn’t here. He let his feet stumble him to the very edge of the declivity that ended in the Bottom Sea, and imagined her voice saying, Dann, Dann, what did you see? – the old childhood game that had served them so well. What was he seeing? He was staring into streaming clouds. Water – again water. His early life had been dust and drought, and now it was water. The abrupt descent before him ended in water and a blue gleam of distant waves, and behind him the reedy swampy ground with its crying marsh birds went on for ever … but no, it did not. It ended. And on the other side of the northern cloud mass, he knew, were shores loaded with ice masses. Much more to the point surely was, Dann, Dann, what do you know? He knew that the vast emptiness of the gulf before him had been sea that came up almost to where he stood now, with boats on it, and there had been cities all around its edge. He knew that cities had been built all over the bottom of the sea, when it was dry, which were now under water, and on islands, still inhabited, but many of those had emptied, were emptying because everyone knew how fast the waters were rising, and could engulf them. Everyone knew? No, he had met people coming to the Centre who knew nothing of all this. He knew, though. He knew because of what the Mahondis knew, fragments of knowledge from distant pasts. ‘It is known,’ one would say, giving the information to another, who did not have it, because they came from a different part of Ifrik. ‘It is known that …’ It was known that long ago when the Ice first came creeping and then piling into mountains all over Yerrup, the mass and pack of ice had pushed all those wonderful cities along the edge of that shore that stood opposite to him now, though he could not see it, over the sides and into the great gulf which was already half full of detritus and debris, before the people of that time – and who were they? – had taken up the stones and blocks of cement that had built the old cities and used them for the cities on the land which was now behind him, but then things changed, the Ice began to melt and the cities sank down. That was when the tundra turned into water. Cold, cold, a terrible cold that destroyed all Yerrup but how was it this sea, the Middle Sea, had been a sea but then was empty? ‘It was known’ that at some time a dryness, just as frightful as the all-destroying Ice, had sucked all the water out of the Middle Sea and left it a dry chasm where cities were built. But it did not fit – these bits of fact did not fit. His mind was a map of bits of knowledge that did not connect. But that was what he did know, as he looked into the moving dark clouds, and heard the seabirds calling as they dropped their way down to the lower sea. And, at his back, the marshes, and beyond them, for they had an end, scrub and sand and dust, Ifrik drying into dust. He and Mara had walked through all that, walked from deserts into marshland, and both were on their way to their opposites, through slow changes you could hardly see, you had to know. What do you know, Dann? – I know that what I see is not all there is to know. Isn’t that of more use than the childish What did you see? He returned to the track and saw stumbling towards him a man ill with exhaustion. His eyes stared, his lips cracked with his panting breath, but although he was at his limits he still moved a hand to the hilt of a knife in his belt, so that Dann could see he had a knife. Just as Dann’s instinct was; his hand was actually moving towards his knife when he let it fall. Why should he attack this man, who had nothing he needed? But the man might attack him: he was well-fed. ‘Food?’ grunted the stranger. ‘Food?’ He spoke in Tundra. ‘Walk on,’ said Dann. ‘You’ll find a place where they’ll feed you.’ The man went on, not in the easy stride Dann was wanting to find, but on the strength of his will. If he didn’t fall into a marsh pool, he would reach the Centre and Griot would feed him. What with? That was Griot’s problem. Dann went on, slowly, thinking that it was easier to walk fast on dust and sand than on this greasy mud that had already been trodden and squashed by a thousand feet. Plenty of people had been this way. More were coming. Dann stood at the side of this track and watched them. They had walked a long distance. Men, then some women, even a child, who had dull eyes and bad breathing. He would die, this child, before he got to the Centre. In Dann’s sack was food, which would save the child, but Dann stood there and watched. How would he ever get into his stride, his own beautiful rhythm, when these refugees came past, came past … He had not made much progress that day, and he was already tired. The sun was sinking over there in the west, behind him. Where was he going to sleep? There wasn’t a dry bit of earth anywhere, all was wet and mud. He peered over the edge of the chasm to see if he could find a good rock to stretch out on but they all sloped: he would roll off. Well, why not? He didn’t care if he did. He went on, looking down at steep and slippery rocks that had been smoothed by thousands of years of the rub of water – but his mind gave up: it was hurting, to think like this. At last he saw a tree growing aslant, a few paces down. He slid to it on glassy rocks and landed with his legs on either side of the trunk. This was an old tree. And it was not the first that had grown on this site. Remnants and fragments of older trees lay about. Dann pulled out some bread from his sack, hung the sack on a low branch and lay back. It was already dark. The night sounds were beginning, birds and beasts he did not know. Overhead was the moon, for the clouds had gone, and he stared at it, thinking how often its brightness had been a threat to him and Mara when they had been trying to escape notice … but he didn’t have to hide now. Dann slept and woke to see a large animal, covered with heavy shags of white hair, standing near him on its hind legs, trying to pull down his bag with the food in it. He sat up, found a stone and flung it, hitting the side of the animal who snarled and escaped, sliding and slipping on scree, before reaching some rocks. It was halfway through the night, and chilly, but worse than that, damp, always so damp. Dann wrapped himself well and thought that if he put the bag with the food under him, the hungry animal might attack him to get it. So he left the bag where it was on the branch and dozed and woke through the rest of the night, waiting for the animal to return. But nothing happened. The sun rose away to the east where – he knew – the shores of the Middle Sea ended, and beyond them unknown lands and peoples. For the first time a doubt appeared in his mind. He had been thinking – for such a long time now – that he would walk to the end of this sea and then … but how far was it? He had no idea. He did not know. He ate some bread, drank water from a little stream running down from the marshes and climbed back to the path. He was stiff. He must find his pace again, which could carry him all day and – if necessary – all night. On his right the marshes were opening into larger pools, and places where you could stand and look down through water on to the roofs of towns. And what roofs – what towns. He remembered the boatman who had brought him and Mara north: he had said he didn’t enjoy looking down to see buildings so much better than anything anyone knew how to build now. It made him miserable, he said. Yes, thought Dann, exactly, it did make one miserable. Perhaps this weight of sorrow on him was simply that: he was ashamed, surrounded always by a past so much more clever and wonderful and rich than anything they had now. Always now you came up against long ago … long, long ago … once there was … once there were, people, cities and, above all, knowledge that had gone. So, what did he know? When you came down to it? Over there the ice mountains were melting over Yerrup and their water poured all along those coasts he could not see, down into the Middle Sea. Water poured from the Western Sea down over the Rocky Gates into the Middle Sea. The marshes had been frozen solid as rock where cities had been built to last for ever but now they stood down there deep under water. And southwards, beyond the marshes, Ifrik and its rivers were drying into dust. Why? He did not know. He knew nothing. Dann’s thoughts were stumbling as wearily as his feet, he was burdened with the weight of his ignorance. And of his shame. Once, long ago, people knew, they knew it all, but now … A man came towards him, tired out, like them all, and Dann called out in Tundra – but saw from the face it was not understood. He tried Mahondi, he tried Agre, and then the odd phrases of the half-dozen languages he knew enough of to say, ‘Where are you from?’ At last one man did stop. The two were alone on the track. Dann pulled out some bread and watched the starving man eat. Then he said, ‘Where are you from?’ Dann heard syllables he recognised. ‘Is that far?’ ‘I have been walking forty days.’ ‘Is your country near the end of the Middle Sea?’ And now a blank face. ‘This is the Middle Sea. We are standing on the edge of it.’ ‘I don’t know anything about that.’ ‘What do you call this, then?’ – Dann indicating the great emptiness just by them. ‘We call it the Divide.’ ‘Dividing what from what?’ ‘The Lands of the Ice from the dry.’ ‘Is your land dry?’ ‘Not like this’ – and the man looked with repulsion at the dull low gleam of the marsh near them. ‘How far then to the end of the Divide?’ ‘The end?’ ‘It must have an end.’ The man shrugged. He wanted to be on his way. His eyes strayed to Dann’s sack. Dann pulled out the food bag and gave him another bit of bread. The man hid it in his clothes. ‘When I was a child I was told my grandfather had walked to see what lands there were beyond ours and found none. He walked many days.’ And he set off towards the Centre. Dann stood there, full of dismay and cursing himself for arrogant stupidity. He had taken it for granted that of course he could walk to the end of this shore; why not? Had he not walked all the way up Ifrik? But how long that had taken … and between him and the end of this shore were wars; these people walking and running, some of them wounded, with bandaged arms and dried blood on them, had run from wars. Did he really want to walk into a war? Into fighting? What was he going to do, then? Dann went on, and on, slowly, not finding his pace, as he was continually having to stop because of the parties of refugees coming towards him, and so it was all that day and at evening it was like the last, wet everywhere, the reedy marshes and – this evening – pale mists moving over the water, and the smell even worse, because of the mists. It was getting dark. Dann looked east into the dusk and thought he would never see the end of this coast. What did he think he was doing, why was he here? On a patch of smooth hard mud at the edge of the road he squatted to draw with his knife’s tip a circle, then an oval, then a long thin shape, a circle stretched out – the Middle Sea. Every puddle, every pond, every lake had a shore that went round, enclosing water. Why had he wanted to walk to where the shore of the Middle Sea ended, to turn around on itself? Because he wanted to see the Ice Cliffs of Yerrup for himself, that was the reason. Well, there might be easier ways of doing that than walking for another long part of his life, and marching straight into wars and fighting. He slid from the edge, as he had done the night before, and landed in a patch of grass where bushes stood about, bent all in one direction, because of the wind from the Ice. He put his sack under his head, his knife ready on his chest, and was pleased with the occasionally appearing moon, which let him keep watch. He woke in darkness. A large vague white mass was close to him and the moon appeared, letting him see it was another of the great beasts lying there, its eyes open, looking quietly at him. Dann’s hand, on his knife’s hilt, retreated. This was no enemy. The moon went in. There was a smell of wet fur. The moon came out. What was this beast? Dann had never seen anything like it. Impossible to tell under all that fur what its body was like, but the face was fine, eyes well spaced, a small face surrounded by bursts of white hair. This was a beast for cold; one did not need to be told that; it would not do well on desert sand or anywhere the sun struck down hot. Where did it come from? What was it doing, lying so close? Why was it? Down Dann’s face wet was trickling. There was no mist tonight. Tears. Dann did not cry, but he was crying now, and from loneliness, his terrible loneliness defined because of this companionable beast so close there, a friend. Dann dropped off but woke, slept and roused himself so as not to miss the sweetness of this shared trustful sleep. In the early dawn light he woke and the animal was there, its head on its vast shaggy paws, looking at him with green eyes. Like Griot’s. This was not a wild animal: it was accustomed to people. And it wasn’t hungry; showed no interest in Dann’s provisions. Dann slowly stretched his hand towards the animal’s paws, where its head lay. It closed its eyes, in acknowledgement of him, and then again. Dann was crying like a child, and thought, It’s all right, there’s no one to see. The two lay there as the light strengthened, and then the beast’s pointed ears stood back and it listened. There were voices up on the road. At once it got up, and slunk down the slope of scree to where a white skeleton bush stood shaking in the wind. There it hid. Dann watched it go, watched his friend go. Then up he leaped, to face the people up there, face what he had to – though he was not sure now what that was. With his head just above the edge he watched a group stumbling past, too exhausted to look up and see him. He waited. No one else seemed to be coming. He got back on the track and saw that soon the ground rose dry towards a low hill, with trees. He had to fill his water bottle, if the marshes were ending. He stepped off the track on a dryish edge between pools, and stood, his face to the sun, letting it warm him. He had been dreaming, as he lay with the beast so near, and it had been a bright dream. Mara, yes, he had been dreaming of her because of the sweetness of the beast’s companionship. How strange it was, the visit of that animal, in the night. Dann was looking into a clear pool, with some weed drifting in it. There were three masses of – well, what? Three masses of whitish substance, just below the water. Two large masses and a smaller one … bubbles were coming from it, a muzzle, pointing up … they were animals, like his night’s companion, they were drowned, but wait – bubbles meant life; that smaller thing there, it was alive. He knelt on the very edge of the marshy pool, risking the edge giving way under him, and pulled at the beast, brought it close to his feet, and lifted up the weight of it with a jerk beside him, nearly falling in himself. Dann raised up the sodden mass by the hind legs and watched water stream from the pointed nose. Water was streaming from everywhere. Surely it must be dead? There was not a flicker of the resistance of life, of animation. And still water was pouring from the mouth, from between new little white teeth. The eyes were half open under mats of wet fur. This was a young animal, the cub of those two cloudy masses of white lying so close. Perhaps they weren’t dead either? But Dann had his hands too full, literally, with this young beast. Which suddenly sneezed, a choking spluttering sneeze. Dann put his arm round the heavy dense wetness and held it so the head was down, to let the water out. It was so cold, the air, a heavy deadly cold and the animal was a cold weight. Dann did not feel cold because he was used to exposure, but he knew this animal would die if he couldn’t warm it. He laid it on some grass tussocks, between the pools, and in his sack found the bundle of clothes he always carried. He used one to wipe the beast’s wet skin, where lumps of wet hair lay matted, and then wrapped it in layers of cloth. What was needed here was blankets, thick layers of warmth, and he had nothing. Surely it should be shivering? He could not feel breath. He opened his jacket, of layered cotton, that was warm enough for him, and buttoned the beast against him, head on his shoulder, feet nearly at his knees. The weight of sodden cold made him shudder. What was he going to do? This was a young thing, it needed milk. Dann stood, holding the beast to stop it sliding down, and looked at the two foamy submerged masses which would lie there for days in this cold water before going putrid. Unless something came to eat them? Marsh birds? There were plenty of small marsh animals. He couldn’t concern himself with them; he doubted if he could have saved the great beasts, even if they did have life in them. He doubted whether he could help this one. He stepped carefully between the marsh tussocks to the path, afraid of overbalancing with this dead weight, and wondered if he should return to the Centre? But that was a good two days’ fast walking to the west. What if he ran? He could not run, with that weight on him. Ahead was the track, winding along the edge of the cliff, but wait – the ground did rise there ahead and where there were trees must, surely, be people. Despite the weight Dann tried to run, but staggered to a stop, and felt against his chest a small but steady beat. At the same time it began sucking at his shoulder. It wanted to live and Dann had nothing, but nothing, to give it. He was crying again. What was wrong with him? He did not cry. This was an animal, out of luck, and he had watched so many die, with dry eyes. But he could not bear it, this young thing that wanted to live and was so helpless. Although the weight was giving him cramps in his legs, he resumed his stumbling run and then, ahead, the dark edge of the wood showed a path going up and, as he thought, people – the beast stopped sucking and whimpered. Dann ran up the path, running for a life, and when ahead he saw a house, more of a shack, with reeds for a roof and reeds for walls, he clutched the animal, because his now fast bounds and leaps were shaking it too much. At the doorway of the shack stood a woman, and she had a knife in her hand. ‘No, no,’ shouted Dann. ‘Help, we need help.’ He was using Mahondi, but what need to say anything? She stood her ground, as Dann arrived beside her, panting, weeping, and opened his jacket and showed her the soaking bundle. She stood aside, put the knife down on an earth ledge on an inside wall, and took the beast from him. It was heavy and she staggered to a bed or couch, covered with blankets and hides. He saw how nimbly she stripped off the soaking clothes, which she let fall to the earth floor. She wrapped the beast in dry blankets. Dann watched. She was frantic, like him, knowing how close the animal was to death. He was looking around the interior of the shack, a rough enough place, though Dann’s experienced eye saw it had all the basics, a jug of water, bread, a great reed candle, a reed table, reed chairs. Then she spoke, in Thores, ‘Stay with it. I’ll get some milk.’ She was a Thores: a short, stocky, vigorous woman, with rough black hair. He said in Thores, ‘It’s all right.’ Apparently not noticing he spoke her language, she went out. Dann felt the animal’s heart. It did beat, just, a faint, I want to live, I want to live. It was not so cold now. The woman returned with some milk in a cup and a spoon, and said, ‘Hold its head up.’ Dann did as he was told. The woman poured a few drops into the mouth between those sharp little teeth, and waited. There was no swallow. She poured a little more. It choked. But it began a desperate sucking with its wet muddy mouth. And so the two sat there, on either side of the animal, which might or might not be dying, and for a long time dripped milk into its mouth and hoped that would be enough to give it life. Surely it should shiver soon? The woman took off the blanket, now soaked, and replaced it with another. The animal was coughing and sneezing. As Dann had done, she lifted it by its back legs, still wrapped in the blanket, and held it to see if water would run out. A mix of water and milk came out. Quite a lot of liquid. ‘It must be full of water,’ she whispered. They were speaking in low voices, yet they were alone and there were no other huts or shacks nearby. Both thought the animal would die, it was so limp, so chilly, despite the blanket. Each knew the other was giving up hope, but they kept at it. And both were crying as they laboured. ‘Have you lost a child?’ he asked. ‘Yes, yes, that’s it. I lost my child, he died of the marsh sickness.’ He understood she had been going out of the room to express her milk to feed the beast. He wondered why she did not put the animal to her breast now, but saw the sharp teeth, and remembered how they had hurt him when the animal sucked at his shoulder. Such was their closeness by now that he put his hand on her strong full breast, and thought that if Mara had had her child, she too would have breasts like this. It was hard to imagine. He said, ‘It must hurt, having that milk.’ ‘Yes,’ and she began to cry harder, because of his understanding. And so they laboured on through the day and then it was evening. During that time they saw only the beast and its struggle for life, yet they did manage to exchange information. Her name was Kass and she had a husband who had gone off into the towns of Tundra to look for work. He was a Tundra citizen but had made trouble for himself in a knife fight and had to look out for the police. They had been living from hand to mouth on fish from the marsh and sometimes traders came past with grains and vegetables. Dann heard from Kass a tale of the kind he knew so well. She had been in the army, a soldier, with the Thores troops, and had run away, just like him and Mara, when the Agre Southern Army had invaded Shari. The chaos was such that she imagined she had got away with it, but now the Hennes Army was short of personnel and was searching for its runaway soldiers. ‘That war,’ she said, ‘it was so dreadful.’ ‘I know,’ said Dann, ‘I was there.’ ‘You can’t imagine how bad it was, how bad.’ ‘Yes, I can. I was there.’ And so he told his tale, but censored because he wasn’t going to tell her he had been General Dann, Tisitch Dann, of the Agre Army, who had invaded Shari and from whom she had run. ‘It was horrible. My mother was killed and my brothers. And it was all for nothing.’ ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘And now Hennes recruiting officers are out everywhere, to enlist anyone they can talk into going back with them. And they are looking for people like me. But the marshes are a protection. Everyone is afraid of the marshes.’ And all that time of their talk the animal breathed in shallow gasps and did not open its eyes. The shack filled with dark. She lit the great reed floor candle. The light wavered over the reed ceiling, the reed walls. The chilly damp of the marshes crept into the room. She shut the door and bolted it. ‘Some of those poor wretches running from the wars try and break in here but I give as good as I get.’ He could believe it: she was a strong muscled woman – and she had been a soldier. She lit a small fire of wood. There was nothing generous about that fire, and Dann could see why: probably this rise with its little wood was the only source of fuel for a long way walking in every direction around. She gave Dann some soup made of marsh fish. The animal was lying very still, while its sides went up and down. And now it began to cry. It whimpered and cried, while its muzzle searched for the absent teats of its mother, drowned in the marsh. ‘It wants its mother,’ said Kass, and lifted it and cradled it, though it was too big to be a baby for her. Dann watched and wondered why he could not stop crying. Kass actually handed him a cloth for his eyes and remarked, ‘And so who have you lost?’ ‘My sister,’ he said, ‘my sister,’ but did not say she had married and that was why he had lost her: it sounded babyish and he knew it. He finished his soup and said, ‘Perhaps it would like some soup?’ ‘I’ll give him some soup tomorrow.’ That meant Kass believed the creature would live. The cub kept dropping off to sleep, and then waking and crying. Kass lay on the bed holding the beast, and Dann lay down too, the animal between them. He slept and woke to see it sucking her fingers. She was dipping them in her milk. Dann shut his eyes, so as not to embarrass her. When he woke next, both woman and animal were asleep. In the morning she gave it more milk and it seemed better, though it was very weak and ill. The day was like yesterday, they were on the bed with the beast, feeding it mouthfuls of milk, then of soup. By now she had told him that because of the ice mountains melting over Yerrup, there was a southwards migration of all kinds of animals and that these animals, called snow dogs, were the most often seen. How was it possible that animals were living among all that ice? No one knew. ‘Some say the animals come from a long way east and they use a route through Yerrup, to avoid the wars that are always going on along this coast, east of here.’ ‘Some say, some say,’ said Dann. ‘Why can’t we know?’ ‘We know they are here, don’t we?’ The animals Dann had seen when sleeping out on the side of the cliff were snow dogs. This was a young snow dog, a pup. Hard to match this dirty little beast with the great beasts he had seen, and their fleecy white shags of hair. He was far from white. His hair was now a dirty mat, with bits of marsh weed and mud in it. Kass wrung out a cloth in warm water and tried to clean the pup, but he hated it and cried. The helpless crying was driving Dann wild with … well, what? Pain of some kind. He could not bear it, and sat with his head in his hands. Kass tried to shush the animal when it started off again. And so another day passed, and another night and at last the snow pup seemed really to open its eyes and look about. He wasn’t far off a baby, but must have been walking with his parents when they fell into the marshes. ‘They must have been chased into the marsh,’ said Kass. People were afraid of them. But they did not attack people, they seemed to want to be friendly. People were saying, suppose the snow dogs become a pack, instead of just ones and twos? They would be dangerous then. Yet there were people who used them as guards. They were intelligent. It was easy to tame them. Kass warmed water, put the pup into it and quickly swirled off the dirt. It seemed to like the warmth. After his bath he was white and fleecy, with large furry paws and a thick ruff round his neck: his intelligent little face looked out from a frame of white ruff. Then, one day, he actually barked, as if trying out his voice. ‘It sounds like Ruff, Ruff, Ruff,’ said Kass. ‘We’ll call him Ruff.’ And now, at night, they set the pup on one side, wrapped in a blanket, instead of lying between them, and they held each other and made love. Both knew they were substitutes for absent loves – her husband, for Kass. For him, that was not easy. Kira was, had been, his lover, but it was Mara he thought of. Suppose Kass’s husband came back suddenly? She said, yes, she was thinking of that. And what did Dann propose to do next? Dann said he was going to walk, walk right to the end of this side of the Middle Sea. He was trying her out and she at once said that he was crazy, he didn’t know what he was talking about. And there were at least two wars going on not far along the track. When people came through from there, they brought news, and war was the news they brought. And Kass knew much more about the Bottom Sea than he did. The opposite north shore did not run in a straight line from the Rocky Gates to – whatever was the end, where it turned to become the southern shore. It was much broken with fingers and fringes of land, and down in the Bottom Sea were a lot of islands, large and small. And that was how the snow dogs came across from the north shore. They swam from island to island. So what did Dann want to do? He wanted to walk. He needed to walk. That meant leaving here. With every day the snow pup was stronger. He sneezed a lot: there was still water in his lungs, they thought. He was a pretty, fluffy young snow dog, who never took his green eyes off them. He loved to lie beside Kass on the bed, but liked better to be with Dann. He snuggled up to Dann and put his head on Dann’s shoulder, as he had been on that walk, or rather run, to get here. ‘He loves you,’ said Kass. ‘He knows you rescued him.’ Dann did not want to leave the snow pup. He did not want to leave Kass but what was the use of that? She had a husband. He loved that animal. That angry fighting heart of Dann melted into peace and love when the snow dog lay by him and licked his face or sucked his fingers. But Dann had to move on. At first he had thought the snow pup would go with him, but that was impossible. Ruff was being fed, carefully, on thin soup and bits of fish and milk, not Kass’s now, but a goat’s, who lived in its pen and bleated because it wanted company. Ruff could not travel with Dann, and Dann had to move on. When Dann set forth, the pup wailed and toddled after him along the path. Kass had to run and try to lift him to carry him back. Kass was crying. The snow pup was crying. And Dann cried too. He told himself that when he was with Kass and the snow pup he had cried most of the time. But he was not someone who cried, he repeated. ‘I don’t cry,’ he said aloud, running faster to get away from the snow pup’s wailing. ‘I never have, so now I must stop.’ Then he realised he had found his pace, he was going at a good loping run along the track, and slowed to a fast walk which would sustain him without tiring. It was a wonderful release for him, and he stopped crying and went on, marshes on one side and cliffs on the other, without stopping or changing pace. No refugees came towards him now. That meant the wars had ended, did it? The fighting was over? Dark came and he slid over the edge to find a bush he could hide in, or a cleft in the rocks. He dreamed of Kass’s kindly bed, and of her, and of the snow pup, but woke dry-eyed, and had a mouthful or two of her provisions, and returned to the path, the sun full in his face. He saw the marshes were less. By that night on his right hand were moors, and he slept not on a sloping cliff face but on a dry rock under sweet-smelling bushes. To be rid of the dank reek of the marshes … he took in great breaths of clean healthy air and so it was all that day and the next, and he thought he must be careful, or he’d run straight into the fighting, if it still went on. And all that time no people had come towards him along the track. Then he saw them, two – well, what were they? Children? When they came close, stumbling, their knees bending under them, he saw they were youngsters, all bone, with the hollow staring eyes of extreme hunger. Their skins … now, what colour was that? Grey? Were there grey people? No, their skins had gone ashy, and their lips were whitish and cracked. They did not seem to see him; they were going past. These two were like him and Mara, long ago, ghostlike with deprivation, but still upright. As they came level the girl – it was a girl? – yes, he thought so – nearly fell and the boy put out his hand to catch her, but in a mechanical, useless way. She fell. Dann picked her up and it was like lifting a bundle of thin sticks. He set her by the road on the side where the moors began. The boy stood vaguely, not understanding. Dann put his arm round him, led him to the grass verge, put him near the girl, who sat staring, breathing harshly. He knelt by them, opened his sack, took out some bread, poured water on it to make it easier to eat. He put a morsel in the girl’s mouth. She did not eat it: had reached that stage of starvation where the stomach no longer recognises its function. He tried with the boy – the same. They smelled horrible. Their breath was nasty. Then he tried out his languages, first the ones he knew well, then the odd phrases, and they did not respond at all, either not knowing any of them, or too ill to hear him. They sat exactly where he had set them, and stared, that was all. Dann thought that he and Mara had never been so far gone they could not respond to danger, had lost the will to survive. He believed these two were dying. To reach the Centre would take many days of walking. They could reach Kass, after a few days, but would be met by her broad sharp knife. Beyond them the moors stretched towards Tundra’s main towns, a long way off. And if they did manage to get themselves up and walk, and reached the marshes, they would probably fall in and drown, or tumble over the edge of the cliffs. And then, as he sat there, seeing how the morsels of food he had placed in their mouths were falling out again, they crumpled up and lay, hardly breathing. They would die there. Dann sat with them, a little, then went on, but not in his pace, his rhythm: he was thinking of how Mara and he had been so often in danger, but had always come through, had slid through situations because of their wariness and quickness, were saved by their own efforts or because of the kindness of others. And by luck … those two back there had not had luck. He saw coming towards him a slight figure, walking in a slow obstinate way that Dann knew: this person, a man, was walking on his will, which was far from the ease of how one moved on that rhythm that seemed to come from somewhere else. He was thin, bony, but was in nothing like the bad state of the two youngsters. Dann called out in Mahondi and was at once answered. He could see the man didn’t want to stop, but Dann held out some bread, a dry piece, and walked forward with it, and the man stopped. He was a small wiry fellow, yellowish in colour – which was his own real colour and not because of starvation – with dark serious eyes and black locks of fine hair. He had a sparse beard. This was no thug or rough. Dann started his interrogation, while the man ate, not in a frantic grasping way, but carefully. Where had he come from? From a very long way east. But surely there is a war? Yes, two, bad ones. The one nearest here had fought itself to a standstill, there was no one left but real soldiers, preparing to make a stand. The one further along was raging. His own country had been invaded; there was civil war. He had left, made a circuit around the further war, knowing it was there, had worked for a farmer for shelter, and some food. And now, what would he find if he went on? Dann told him, carefully, watching him nod, as he took in the important points. He must not let himself fall into the marshes or over the cliffs. If he went on long enough he would come to a vast complex of buildings, called the Centre, and there he could find a man called Griot, who would help him. And why did Dann do all this for this stranger? He liked him. He was reminding him of someone, a friend who had helped him, Dann thought, and there was something about that intelligent face … ‘What is your name?’ ‘They call me Ali.’ He added, trusting Dann as Dann trusted him, ‘I was the king’s scribe. I had to run away – I was too well known.’ ‘And your country’s name?’ Dann had never heard it. It was beyond Kharab – and Dann scarcely knew where that was. He gave this Ali a hunk of Kass’s bread, and watched him hide it in his clothes, before he went on, hesitant at first, because he was tired, but then stronger, and steadily. Then he turned and looked back at Dann and gave a little bow, hand on his heart. And as Dann watched him, thinking of him as a friend – why did he feel he knew this Ali? – he heard shouts and the sounds of running feet. What he saw then made him drop over the edge of the cliff, though it was steep there, because he knew these people meant danger. A large noisy crowd and they were hungry, and some wounded, with old dried blood on them, and half-healed cuts. If they knew he had food they would kill him. He could see all this from that one glance. He did not put his head up over the edge until they had gone on. He knew Ali was quick and clever enough to hide from them. And what was Griot going to do with this crowd of bandits when they turned up? He saw near him a quite large path. Down he went between slabs of dark rock that had been smoothed by water, thinking that previous descents to the Bottom Sea had taken him half a day, but the Middle Sea was deeper here, for darkness fell when there was a long way to go. He ensconced himself for the night in a shelter for travellers, hoping he would not have company, but though he slept with his knife ready there was no knock, or intruding feet, or the strong smell of an animal. He stood outside the hut door as the sun rose, seeing that this part of the Middle Sea was full of islands, some whose tops were level with and even higher than the edges of the sea. And the islands were wooded, he could see that, easily now, and there were lights on them that went out as the sunlight grew strong. He was thinking of those two who probably still lay by the side of the track, whom he had seen wavering towards him, as if blown by the wind, hatchlings in a storm – and why should he care more about them than so many others? But he did think of them. The crows or other raptors of the wild moor would have found them by now. He let the sun flush his stiff limbs with warmth and took the path again. Many used it. Before he reached the edge of the Bottom Sea he saw another travellers’ hut. Wood. He had become so used to reed roofs, walls, reed everything that it was pleasant to see well-honed planks and solidly encompassing roofs of wooden tiles. It was well past midday now. The sky blazed and the sea was very blue and full of sharp little waves. Very cold water – his fingers went numb at once. On the shore was a flat place where a post stood on the water’s edge. He saw two things; that it was submerged a third of the way up, and that fish traps were tied to it. The post was to hold a boat and so he had only to wait and there would be a boat. There was a bench. He sat and looked across at the nearest island from where he could expect the boat. He could be seen from there. Probably the boatmen kept a lookout and came over when they saw someone waiting. He drowsed – down here he did not feel fearful, or the anxiety of watchfulness. He was woken by a boat scraping at the landing place. In the boat was a youth and a snow dog, which leaped out and ran up the cliff. The youth said, smiling, ‘I give them a lift, to save them a swim.’ Dann asked in Mahondi, ‘How much to take me over?’ but the youth shook his head, and Dann tried Charad and then Tundra and heard, ‘What’s your money?’ Dann had handfuls of different coinages, and the youth nodded at the Tundra coins. He was not asking much; Dann got into the boat and they set off. What was the name of the island? Dann asked all the necessary questions until, when he said, ‘Are you part of Tundra?’ he encountered a hostile response: Dann saw that he was up against strong local pride. The islands saw themselves as a unit and they had fought off any attempts to possess them, though Tundra had tried. ‘They’ve given up now. Tundra’s lost its teeth,’ he said, repeating what Dann had heard from Kass. ‘They are not what they were. We hear everyone’s had enough of Tundra government.’ They were in the middle of the crossing, the sunlight burning up off the water. It was hotter down here than it ever was up on the cliffs. ‘So I believe,’ said Dann, wanting to hear more, but not what he heard then. ‘They say that the old Centre’s got a new lease on life. There’s a new master now, one of the old line. General, they call him, but he’s Prince as far as I am concerned. We like the old ways, here. If there was a bit of law and order up there again things would be easier for us.’ Dann thought of saying, ‘I was recently in the Centre and that’s just gossip,’ but did not want to define himself too early – if at all. He liked not being known, being free, himself. They reached the shore and saw a couple of snow dogs half concealed in some trees. ‘They wait and hope that one of us’ll give them a lift. They can swim, but it’s a good bit of a swim for them, with all that hair getting wet. Some of the boatmen give them a hand. I do, but others don’t. They’re harmless. I think that they never saw humans before coming here. They’re curious about us.’ And so he chattered, while they balanced on the waves and until they landed at a little town, already lit for the night. It was a cheerful scene, and under Dann’s feet was hard dry ground and there was a smell of woodsmoke. The boatman, Durk, said that that inn over there, the Seabird, was a good one, run by his parents. Dann knew this was advice better ignored, in a town where everyone to do with travelling was in the pay of the police, but he thought he had nothing to fear now, particularly if Tundra’s agents were not welcome. He wandered for a while about the streets, enjoying the fresh sea air, and admiring the solid comfortable buildings of wood and stone. Plenty of stone for building here: there was solid rock just below the earth surface. No houses here were going to sink into marsh. He found himself expected at the inn and spent the evening in the common-room, listening to the talk. A pleasant crowd, of people who all knew each other. They were interested in Dann, but too polite to ask questions. They watched him, though, as he ate his supper of fish, and a kind of porridge made of a grain he did not know. How unlike they were to the Thores, though they too were a short people, a good head shorter than Dann. The Thores were stubby, with light bones and black short straight hair. Their skin colour – could one say of skin that it was greenish? Compared with the light warm brown of these people, yes. Dann had seen on Kass’s cheekbones a sheen of green, and blueish shadows in her neck. Now he saw this, in retrospect, looking at these faces where the brown had reddish tints. And their hair – black – was all waves and curls. What a cheerful crowd they were, and living without fear. Not a weapon in the room – except for Dann’s hidden knife. They were pleased when he asked questions, which were answered from all over the room. There were a thousand people on this island. All the islands lived by trading fish from this well-stocked sea. They dried it, cured it in many different ways and carried it up the cliffs to sell in the towns along the shore to the east. But the wars had ended all that and fish was piling up at their warehouses. They planned to try an expedition across the moors into Tundra’s big towns, though they must expect to be careful: there was disorder now the government was weak. They also sold fishing nets made from marsh reed, fetched down from what they called, simply, ‘up there’. They made cloth from a variety of the reed, and every kind of basket and container, some that could hold water. One of the islands was not hilly, was flat enough for fields, and grain was grown. All had goats, which gave milk and meat and hides. They lived well, they told Dann; and feared nobody. Dann asked if it would be easy to make a journey from island to island until he could stand under the ice cliffs of Yerrup, for he longed to see them for himself. It was possible, was the answer, but not advisable. The ice masses were so unstable these days you never knew when they were going to crack and fall. Sometimes you could hear the ice cracking even here, so far away. Dann saw they had no conception that their way of life would soon change, and on some islands, the lower ones, end. Yet ‘up there’ everyone knew it. The inhabitants of the lower islands would move to the higher ones, and then to the higher ones still – did they know that under the waves that surrounded them were the ruins of great cities? No, they laughed when he mentioned this and said there were all kinds of old stories about that time. These people did not want to know. And it was not the first time, after all, that he observed this phenomenon: people whose existence was threatened and did not know it. Would not. They could not bear it. How long before the water rose and covered this pleasantly wooded prosperous island? In the morning he walked to the shore and went a good way along it. The water was rising fast. Not far along the coast houses stood in water, some submerged. When he mentioned them at the inn there were jests and laughter, and he heard, ‘Oh, yes, we know, but it’ll last us our time, and our children’s.’ At the inn he shared a large room that had several beds. One of them was the boatman’s, Durk, who was a son of the house. Only couples had their own bedrooms. The corresponding room, for women, had a snow dog as guardian, sleeping across the threshold. This was so comfortable, this inn, these people, but Dann was restless and told Durk he wanted to go to the end of this long island. Durk said there was no inn there, Dann that he was used to sleeping out. Durk was uneasy, and intrigued. ‘But it will be cold,’ he said. Dann told him he would take with him goatskin rugs, and added, ‘I’ll look after you.’ He was seeing this young man as a youth, a boy, even, but they were the same age. Dann lay in the dark, seeing stars bright through the square of the window, thought of Kass and of his snow pup, and then of the hard dangerous histories of everyone he had ever known. Down here it was – but really, another world, safe. They were safe, at least for a time. They were comfortable and safe, well fed and safe, and Dann was seeing them as children, as a childlike people. He lay awake and watched the stars move. Durk was across the room, and a couple of other local youths. Most of the beds were empty: the wars ‘up there’ were disrupting movement. Sometimes people had come to trade who had walked a whole cycle of the sun to get there. Sometimes they stayed, enticed by the island’s way of life, and the safety. Dann lay with his hand on his knife’s hilt, and thought for the first time in his life that perhaps he was mistaken to see people who were fed and unthreatened as inferior. What was wrong with living in what he thought of as a sort of easy dream? They were happy. It was a word Dann did not have much acquaintance with. Content. They did not lock their doors. No one kept watch on any of the islands. Dann made himself lie quietly, loosened and at ease, not clenched and wary, and thought he might as well stay down here – why not? For one thing, he had promised Griot he would return. He had promised, so he must – soon, not yet. And there was the Farm, where Mara would have her child by now, and Kira, with hers – his. It was not Kira’s child he thought of as his, though, but Mara’s. Kira might be kin, but she was certainly not his kind. In the morning at the communal table was a woman who said she was a refugee from the war nearest to here. She had arrived down at the shore last night, waited for someone to come, and had swum over. She was in a poor way, from lack of food, but her eyes burned with the intention to survive. She was claiming asylum. But if she fed herself up a bit she would easily get a husband, he was sure. Dann set off, with Durk, his sack full of provisions, to see the island. He could not at first understand what it was he was experiencing, a refreshment of his whole self, a provisioning, like a fine and heady food. Then he did. He had not seen ever in his life whole forests of healthy trees, but only trees standing in dust, trees dying of dryness, trees that seemed whole and well until you saw a limpness in their leaves and knew that drought was attacking their roots. And here were trees of a kind he had never seen, dark trees that spired up, their boughs made of masses of thin sharp needles, sending out a brisk aromatic scent; and light graceful trees with white trunks that shivered and shimmered in the smallest breeze. There were bushes that crept about over the rocky earth, laden with berries. Dann told Durk of what he had experienced in the drought-struck lands of southern Ifrik, and saw that he was not being believed. Durk listened to him talk, with an appreciative grin, as if he were a storyteller who had embarked on a tall tale. When they reached the end shore, with a further island in sight, Dann lay down to sleep on a mat of the springy low bushes, and Durk said he would too, as if this were a great adventure for him. Lying side by side, Dann in his cotton jacket, Durk covered by the goatskin rug, stars closer and brighter than they ever were ‘up there’, Dann was ready to fall asleep but Durk asked him to go on talking about his adventures. And that is how Dann found how he could keep himself on this trip, when he had so little money, and no means of getting any. There was no shortage of labour here, and it was skilled labour. Fishermen whose fathers and grandfathers had voyaged for fish, travelled in their little boats everywhere in the islands. There were specialists who dried and cured the fish. Others traded it, climbing to ‘up there’. Youngsters looked after goats, and women farmed grain. Dann’s skills were not needed. When they returned to the inn, Dann said he would tell tales of his early adventurous life, in return for his food and his bed. That evening the common-room was full. Durk had gone around spreading the news that this visitor of theirs was a storyteller. The big room, well lit with its fish-oil lamps, was crowded, and Dann stood by the bar counter and looked around, trying to judge how they would take his tales, and wondered which they would like best. He stood frowning, the long fingers of his left hand across his mouth, as if they were censoring memories. He was not like professional storytellers, who are affable and know how to hold people’s eyes, how to pause, make a suspense, come in with surprises, spring a joke at tense moments. They saw a tall, too thin young man, his long black hair held by a leather band, standing hesitating there, and that face of his, so unlike theirs, was full of doubt. But it seemed like pain to them. Where should he begin? If Mara had been here, she would start a long way before he could, because his memories began when he ran away from the Rock Village with the two men who treated him so badly. There were children in the room, who had been promised stories. He could not tell about some of the ways he had been mistreated to children. He began his tale with the dust drifts and dried rivers, with the bones of dead animals lying in heaps where floods had carried them earlier. He saw the children’s faces grow dubious, and then a child began crying, hushed by its mother. Dann told of how he had hidden behind a broken wall and saw carried past on the shoulders of porters wooden cages that had in them captives from a war who would be sold in the slave markets. And a child cried out and its mother took him out. ‘I see’, said Dann, smiling in a shamefaced, desperate way, ‘that my memories are not for children.’ ‘Yes, I think so too,’ said another mother. And so Dann’s memories emerged softened and some became comic. When he heard his audience laughing for the first time he felt he could laugh himself, with relief. Then things became serious again when he said he had met travellers who said that his sister was alive in the Rock Village, and he made his way south, when everyone was running north. He evaded the places where it seemed everything was burning, even the soil, saw the gold and red of the fires flickering through the hills, and found Mara, so near death she was like an old monkey, with filthy matted lumps of hair he had to scrape off with his knife, and skin stretched tight over her bones. And now, as he told of their journey northwards through all those dangers, they all forgot he had none of the storytellers’ skill: he was speaking slowly, as he remembered, so deep in his past that they leaned forward to catch every word. He reached to where he pushed the sky-skimmers up and down the ridges, and had to stop, to explain sky-skimmers. ‘They came originally from the museums of the Centre,’ he said, and described them. Machines that had been able to fly once, but, grounded from lack of knowledge and the fuel they needed, became conveyances for travellers able to pay. They saw he seemed to crouch there before them, imagining how he had pushed the machines up and down the ridges – imagining Mara there, with him. He stopped, seeing it was late and some children were asleep. He lay in his bed. Durk, who was across the room, said, ‘Did all that really happen to you?’ ‘Yes, and much more, much worse.’ But he had realised he could not tell them some of his experiences. They would be shocked and hurt by them. In the day he roamed around, and saw off the western shore the white skeletons of trees sticking up from the sea and around each trunk the fish nosing. They liked these dead trees. Some still green trees were half submerged, the salt water whitening their branches. He and Durk stood there together, and Dann said, ‘The water is rising fast.’ And Durk said, ‘Oh, no, you are exaggerating.’ At night Dann told of the water dragons and the land dragons, and heard his audience laugh, and had to say, ‘But you have lizards here, don’t you? – all kinds of lizard. So why not really big ones?’ But there was always a point in his recitals when his audience was not with him. They did not believe him. Their imaginations had gone fat and soft with the comfort of their lives. What they liked best were tales of the Mahondi house in Chelops, and the girls in their pretty coloured dresses, preparing herbs in the courtyard, and how they tended the milk beasts. He said nothing about the horrors of the Towers of Chelops. What he remembered hurt him to think of, and yet he knew he had forgotten the really bad parts. He said how Mara had come into the Towers to rescue him, and how he had been nursed back to health by a woman who knew about herbs and healing. They could not get enough of all that, and he never told them that this idyll of lovely living had ended in civil war and exile. Soon he was off again, with Durk, to another island, which was like the first, with small quiet towns, and inns that were full of people in the evenings. Durk said this ought to be a short visit, because he wanted to get married. He and his girl had been promised their room. The custom was that the new couple was accompanied after a celebration to their room, which was kept decorated with boughs and flowers for a full month. Then, if either wished to end it, there was no criticism or opprobrium, but if they stayed together they were considered bound and there were penalties for frivolous or lightly considered severance. But really Durk seemed content enough to linger on this island, where he had not been before. It was large, with a stream that provided sport and fishing: otherwise there were no novelties. All the islands were the same, Durk said, as far as he knew. Why should they be any different? He had not remarked, it seemed, that the islands being all the same suggested a long, stable history. When Dann pointed this out he was struck by it and said, yes, he supposed this must be so. He was so incurious, Dann was often impatient. Nothing in these beautiful islands was ever questioned. When he asked about an island’s history, the reply was vague: ‘We have always been here.’ What does that mean, always, Dann asked, at first, but then did not bother. He, too, liked this island and then Durk pointed out that they had been here so long people were asking if they intended to make their home there. And Dann’s tales in the evenings at the inns were becoming repetitious. They moved on, and then again, from island to island, always moving nearer to the north shore’s ice cliffs. Durk did make rueful jokes about his girl – that she would have found another man by now. He stayed with Dann because, as he said, ‘You make me think, Dann.’ And on the last island there was plenty to make Dann think too. In the inn there on the walls of the common-room were two maps, just as there had been in Chelops. But these two were of when the Middle Sea had been full of water, and of how it was now. Goatskins had been stitched together and stretched. On the first were islands, big ones, which were the tops of those that could be seen now, mountains reaching high up, to the level of the cliffs. Sticking out into the sea from the north shore were promontories and fringes of land. One was long and thin, like a leg. The person who had made this map ‘long, long ago’ had drawn little boats balancing on steep waves. At one end to the west were the Rocky Gates, but they stood apart, with sea between. On the other end, to the east, was the word ‘Unknown’. There were towns indicated all around this sea. The other map was of the Middle Sea, as it had been before the Ice began to melt. Cities crowded all over the bottom – and they were here now, far down under these new waves. So these people did know that there had been cities – but when asked, some said that the artist must have had a fine imagination. Who was he, she – who were they? The maps were skilful, much finer than those back in Chelops, which had been crude. (And where were those maps now, after fire and fighting? Did they still survive, and did the new people see them and understand what they said?) You had to have an eye to read a map – as Dann discovered when he found that Durk could not make sense of them. Dann stood there, with Durk, using a clean stick to show how this ragged shape was that island – ‘Over there – do you see?’ – this black charcoal line the shore. Durk was reduced to sighing wondering incoherence, standing there, watching Dann’s patient indicator. And he was not the only one. Others in the common-room, seeing them there, came to stand and marvel at the maps they had known all their lives but never understood, maps that had not been used to teach children. Those that could read them had not instructed those who could not. Here was this incuriosity again, that made Dann uneasy. ‘See here’ – and his stick pointed at where they were now, the group of islands scattered across the sea, from the southern shore to near the northern shore. ‘This is where we are now. Once these were just little bumps at the bottom of the dry Middle Sea.’ And will be again, he stopped himself saying, for this kind of thing was making people fear him. Already his reputation as a know-all and a show-off was growing. His tales about his life – not everyone believed them, though they laughed and applauded. As for Dann, his mind was hurt by the enormity of it all. Yes, he knew the Middle Sea had been full and fresh, and ships went everywhere over it, and now it was nearly empty; yes, he had joked with Mara about the ‘thousands’ and the ‘millions’ that it was not really possible for their minds to grasp, let alone hold. But now, standing on land protruding from the Bottom Sea that had once been deep under it, when the seabirds cried over the waves, and disappeared, that was how he felt: who was Dann? – standing here where … Once this enormous gash in the earth’s surface had been filled with water. So, it had boiled away in some frenzy of heat, or it had frozen into a great pit of snow and then some unimaginable wind storm had carried the snow away? All at once? Surely, over – here he went again – thousands of years. A sea, sparkling and lively, like the one he looked at now through the windows of the inn, but high above his head, at the level of the top of the cliffs where he had walked and would walk again and then – gone, gone, and his mind felt hurt, or something was hurting, and – he saw Durk, frowning up at the maps and turning a doubtful face to him. ‘Tell me again, Dann, it’s so hard to take in, isn’t it?’ Then, seeing his interest in the maps, the inn’s proprietress, the young woman, Marianthe, showed Dann something he did not understand, at first. Standing against a wall in the common-room was a large slab of white rock, about the thickness of half his hand, very heavy, covered on one side in a story. There were men, of a kind Dann had never seen, smiling faces with pointed curling beards, and expressions of crafty cleverness. They wore garments held with metal clasps, much worked. The women had elaborate black curls framing the same crafty smiling faces, and their garments were twisted and folded, and one breast was bare. They wore necklaces and bracelets, and ornaments in their hair. To look at them was to know how very far these people were above anybody that lived now – as far as he knew – and he had after all seen many different people. Perhaps it was these people who had made all the things in the Centre no one knew now how to use? Who were they? – he asked Marianthe, who said, ‘It was a long time ago.’ Neither did anyone know where the white slab had come from. That it had been a long time in the water could be seen; the sharp edges of the carved figures had been dulled. So it had been pulled up out of the water, at some time, somewhere, or fallen over the cliff with the melting ice. Marianthe was as intrigued by the people on the slab as Dann was. And looking at her, it was at once evident how fascinated she was. She was tall, she was slim, she had black hair in curls around her face, for she modelled herself on the women carved on the slab. She was paler than anybody Dann had seen, who was not an Alb. And her face, though not fine and subtle like the smiling slab women, did have a look of them. She had a long, thin, always smiling mouth and long, narrow, observing eyes. She was the widow of a seaman drowned not long ago in a storm. She did not seem oppressed by this fatality, but laughed and made fun with her customers, who were mostly seamen, for this island was the base of the main fishing fleet. And she liked Dann, giving him not only his food and shelter but herself, when she had heard his tales of ‘up there’. She laughed at him, knew that he was making it all up, but said her husband had liked a good tale and told them well. Dann was telling them well by now, with so much practice. Durk meanwhile went out with the fishing fleet. He was not jealous, but said that now Dann had found this easy berth, he should stay in it. Dann was tempted to do just that. This woman was quick and clever, like Kira, but not unkind; seductive, like Kira, but did not use her power. How could he do better than stay with this prize of a woman, down here on the islands of the Bottom Sea, with the aromatic forests, and where it was hard rock underfoot, never marshy and sodden. But he had promised Griot – hadn’t he? Well, who was Griot that Dann had to honour a promise he felt had been pressured out of him? But Griot was waiting for him. And at the Farm Mara did too – although she did slide into another man’s arms every night to sleep. ‘Stay with me, Dann,’ coaxed Marianthe, winding her long limbs around him. ‘I can’t,’ he conscientiously replied. ‘There are people waiting for me to come back.’ ‘Who, who, Dann? Are you married? Who is she?’ ‘No, I am not married,’ said Dann – but could not bring himself to say, ‘I have a child – you see, there’s a child,’ which would have settled it. To say that would have acknowledged Kira who, with every day, seemed to Dann more of a lump of showy charms displayed like a visual equivalent of ‘Look at me! Look at me!’. Well, he was very young when he first fell for Kira, he tried to excuse himself and knew he could not then have imagined a woman as delightful, as candid, as subtly clever as Marianthe. Whom he would have to leave … yes, he must … yes, soon … but not yet. First, he wanted to see the ice cliffs that so haunted his mind and called to him. This island was the last inhabited one. Within sight, on the horizon, was another, a half-day’s rowing away, uninhabited, though it had been once, and abandoned because of the cracking and roaring of the falling ice. From there, he was sure, he could get close enough to see what he so acutely imagined. No one wanted to accompany him: they thought he was mad. Durk, though reluctantly, said he would go too. Young men taunted them for being foolhardy, a little envious perhaps, since none of them had thought of going. Dann and Durk went quietly about preparations, and then four others said they would go. Durk, who had actually been planning to use his little boat, was now glad to leave it in favour of a bigger one that needed several rowers. ‘But we need six oarsmen,’ protested the four brave ones and Dann said that he had earned his living once as a boatman. Marianthe’s eyes never left Dann that last evening, and in bed she held him and said, loudly, to reach the ears of some god of the islands, that she was being expected to sacrifice another man to the sea. And she wept and kissed the scars on Dann’s body. It was a clear morning when they left, six strong young men in the fishing boat, that had its nets and pots removed. Instead there was food and piles of goat rugs. They rowed all morning, to the north, to the island which as it neared showed itself standing clear of the waves, well-wooded and, in the sunlight, inviting. They pulled the boat up on a beach and went into the interior where at once they found an abandoned town that was already falling down. They put their gear into a house that had shutters that could be fixed across the windows, and a door that could be barred. They had glimpsed on the edge of the wood a snow dog, standing watching them – and then another. It was a pack, which had decided to stay here on this island and not make the effort to cross. And indeed, it was hard to see how the others had made the trip; it would be a dangerous swim for any snow dog, no matter how strong. Then the six walked carefully to the northern end of the island, not speaking, because the sound of crashing ice, cracking ice, groaning ice, was so loud. No wonder the people had left here. There was a beach there, and bollards that had once held boats safe. They were staring across a white sea at what looked like icy clouds, shining white, higher than any had imagined the Ice could be, and behind them were taller reaches of white. They were staring at the ice cliffs of Yerrup, that seemed undiminished, in spite of how they cracked and fell. As they gazed, a portion of the lower shining mass groaned and fell, and slid into the waves, leaving a dark scarred cliff which from here looked like a black gap on the white. Although they were far away, the noise was unpleasant and any remark anyone made was silenced by a fresh roar of complaint from the packed and ancient snows. ‘There,’ said Durk, ‘now you have seen it.’ ‘I want to go closer,’ said Dann in an interval in the noise. At once the others, all five at once, expostulated. And as he persisted, went on protesting. ‘Then I shall go by myself,’ said Dann. ‘I can manage the boat.’ This put them on the spot. He could not be allowed to go alone, and yet they were afraid and their faces showed it. And it was frightening, standing there, the sea chopping about so close, disturbed by the blocks of falling ice and behind them the dark woods, where they knew a pack of snow dogs was bound to be watching them, and probably wondering if it were safe to attack. There couldn’t be so much food here, not enough to keep a pack of large animals well fed. Clouds slid across the sky and without sunlight it was a dismal scene. ‘Why don’t we spend the night here?’ said Dann. ‘We’ve got plenty of food. And then you decide if you’ll come with me.’ This was taunting them; he had a small, not very pleasant grin on his face. They would have to come with him. Otherwise back on their island it would be said they had left Dann to challenge danger alone. Durk said, ‘Yes, why don’t we sleep on it? And if the sea is bad tomorrow morning, then we’ll forget it – eh, Dann?’ Dann shrugged. They walked back on an overgrown path and caught sight of the big white animals keeping level with them. They were pleased to get inside the house, start a fire with the driftwood that still was stacked in a corner, light the rush lights they had brought, and eat. Durk asked Dann where he had been a boatman. He told them of the boat on the River Cong, the river dragons and the old woman Han, and the sun trap. They listened, sometimes exchanging glances, so that they could not be thought gullible, believing these tall tales. When Dann got to the place where the war had filled the water with corpses, he left all that out; exactly as, talking to children, he softened and made pleasant, so now he felt that this innocence should be spared. These were good, peaceful people who had never known war. They slept, without a guard, knowing the shutters and the door were solid, though they could hear the animals roaming about and testing the entrances. In the morning the sky was clear and Dann said, ‘If the sea is all right, I’m going.’ They walked to the landing place and this time the animals openly accompanied them. ‘They want us to help them across the sea,’ said Dann. ‘Let them want,’ said one of the lads, and the others agreed. Dann said nothing. At the sea’s edge the waves were no worse than yesterday, choppy and brisk, but Dann went to the boat without looking to see if the others came too and pushed it out; then they did join him. They were sulky, resistant, and Dann knew they hated him. Dann was soon rowing fast, straight towards the nearest cliffs. The sun was burning their faces and shoulders, and now they could see slabs of ice lying along the bottom of the cliffs, and they were rowing between blocks of ice like houses. Still Dann went on. The noise was frightful today, a cacophony of ice complaints, and Dann shouted, ‘Stop!’ as they saw the cliff nearest to them shed its ice load in a long single movement like a shrug to remove a weight. Now they were close, too close, to a tall shining cliff face, bare of ice, though water was bounding down, off rocks, in freshets and rivers, and the sea was rocking and rearing so badly that the boat was in danger of overturning. They were clutching the sides and calling out, while Dann was yelling with exultation, for this was what he had dreamed of, and it was what he was seeing – there were the ice cliffs of Yerrup and the sounds they made as they fell was like many voices, all at once, shouting, groaning, screaming – and then, crack, another ice face was peeling off, and Dann found that the others had turned the boat and it was rocking its way back to the shore, a long, dangerous way off. ‘No,’ cried Dann. ‘No, I want to stay,’ but Durk said, across the noise, ‘We are leaving, Dann.’ And so Dann, in the back of the boat, sat staring at the retreating ice cliffs. And before they reached shore and safety, a large block of ice that shone blue and green and dusky pink was coming straight for them. To get out of its way they all had to row, Dann too, and then sat resting on their oars to watch it rock past. They reached the shore and the waiting snow dogs. Dann was white-faced and miserable. He wanted more, more, and closer, and he knew these men would not give him what he wanted. He was thinking they were cowards. These were soft people, on these islands. Tender living had made them so. Well, he would talk in the inn of the wonders of the creaking and sliding cliffs, and use what was left of his money to pay others to go with him. Dann stood on the shore, gazing at the cliffs, at the black places on the white cliffs, and wondered how long the ice had clung to those frozen sides, how long had it taken to form. He did not know, could not know; he was back in the realm of ‘long, long ago’ and the bitterness of it. He wanted so badly to know … surely answers could be found if only he could go further into the cliffs and then along them, and perhaps even climb up on to the ice and see – what would he see? For one thing, how did the snow dogs survive in all that wilderness of ice? How did they come down the cliffs? He stood and stared and the others, pulling up the boat and making it safe, sent wondering looks at him. There were tears on his face. This was a strange one, this Dann, they might have been saying aloud. It was latish in the day, the sun would soon be gone behind the cliffs. It would be better to spend the night and go early tomorrow. And so they did. They did not ask Dann for more of his tales, but first Durk, then the others, treated him gently, because of the unhappiness in his face. ‘Dann,’ said Durk, in consolation, as they lay down on their goatskins to sleep. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You saw what you wanted?’ And Dann said, as if to a child, ‘Yes, I did, you’re right, I did see them.’ Next morning, when they had eaten and left the house clean and tidy, they went out and a pack of snow dogs was sitting about, looking at them. ‘Are we going to give some of them a lift over?’ said Dann, and at once the others said, ‘No, we aren’t.’ And ‘Let them swim’ and ‘There’s no room in the boat’. As they walked to the boat, Dann saw an old abandoned craft, large, that did not seem to be holed, or useless. Without asking the others, he put rope that he always carried with him into its prow and pulled, and then Durk helped. Dann and Durk pushed the boat on to the waves and Dann tied it to their boat. The dogs crowded closer, seeming to know what was being done. The young men got on to their boat and were ready to row, their faces, all but Durk’s, critical and sullen. ‘The dogs won’t stay on this island,’ said Dann. ‘They always want to go on.’ ‘They’ll drown, if that boat sinks,’ said one. A bold snow dog jumped into the boat, then another, and then there were five in the boat. Others hung back, afraid. ‘You’ll have to wait a long time,’ said Durk to them, laughing. ‘No one’s going to come back here if they can help it.’ But the big animals whined and moved about on the sand, and could not make themselves get on to the boat. The first boat set off, all of them rowing, and the boat with the dogs followed on the rope. The water was very cold. Surely any dog attempting that swim must drown? The waves were tall and sharp, and seemed to be attacking the boat. The winds were belligerent. They had not gone more than a short way when one dog jumped into the sea to swim back. They watched it, but the waves were too high and soon they could not see it. ‘Drowned,’ said one youth and did not need to add, ‘I hope.’ Dann thought of his snow pup and remembered the little beast’s nuzzling at his shoulder. Back at their landing stage they watched the animals leap off the old boat, swim to the shore and disappear into a wood. Dann descended with Marianthe from their bedroom to the inn’s common-room, expecting hostility, but saw the young men who had gone with him being bought drinks and questioned about the trip. They were enjoying their fame, and when Dann appeared mugs were lifted towards him from all the room. Dann did not join the five, but let them keep their moment. He sat with Marianthe, and when people came to lay their hands on his shoulders and congratulate him, he said that without the others, nothing could have been achieved. But no one had ever gone so near the ice cliffs, until he came to this island. And now Marianthe was saying that it was time for their room to be decorated with the wedding branches and flowers; it was time to celebrate their union. Dann held her close and said that she must not stop him leaving – when he did leave. In the common-room people were joking about him and Marianthe, and not always pleasantly. Some of the young men had hoped to take the place of her husband and resented Dann. He never replied to the jokes. Now he began to press them for another excursion. Had they ever seen the great fall of water from the Western Sea into this one? Marianthe said her husband wanted to make the attempt, but had been talked out of it. The feeling was that it would take days in even the largest fishing boat and it was not known if there were islands near the Falls where they could restock. But the real reason for the reluctance was the same: what for? was the feeling. Weren’t things all right as they were? They were talking of a wildly dangerous event, which they knew must appeal to Dann’s reckless nature, and were satisfied with the trip to the ice cliffs: Dann and the fishermen and Durk were great heroes, and Dann did not say that compared with some of the dangers in his life it was not much of a thing to boast about. He began going out with the fishermen; they seemed to think he had earned the right, because of his daring adventure to the ice cliffs. He learned the art of catching many different kinds of fish, and became friends with the men. All the time he was thinking of the northern icy shores and their secrets, hoping to persuade them to take him close again. He asked many questions, and learned very little. He was up against their lack of curiosity. He often could not believe it when he asked something and heard, ‘We’ve never needed to know that,’ or some such evasion. The bitterness of his ignorance grew in him. He could not bear it, the immensity of what he didn’t know. The pain was linked deep in him with something hidden from him. He never asked himself why he had to know what other people were content to leave unknown. He was used to Mara, who was like him, and longed to understand. Down here on this lovely island, where he was a stranger only in this one thing – that these people did not even know how ignorant they were – he thought of Mara, missed her and dreamed of her too. Marianthe said to him that he had been calling out for a woman, called Mara. Who was she? ‘My sister,’ he said and saw her politely sceptical smile. How it isolated him, that smile, how it estranged her. He thought that back in the Centre Griot would not smile if Dann talked of Mara, for he had lived at the Farm. The pain Dann felt was homesickness, but he did not suspect that: he had never had a home that he could remember, so how could he be missing one? He must leave. Soon, he must leave, before Marianthe’s disappointment in him turned to worse. But still he lingered. He liked being with the girls who helped Marianthe with the inn’s work. They were merry, teased and caressed him, and made fun. ‘Oh, why are you so serious, Dann, always so serious, come on, give me a smile …’ He thought that Kira could be one of them – but even as he did, knew her presence would end the laughter. Well, then, suppose she had been born here, in this easy pleasant place, rather than as a slave, with the threat of being taken for breeding by the Hadrons, would she then have been kind and loving, instead of always looking for an advantage, always ready to humiliate? Was he asking, then, if these girls, whose nature was to caress and charm, had been born for it? But here Dann was coming up against a question too hard for him: it was a matter of what people were born with. Had Kira been born hard and unkind? If these girls had been born into that city, Chelops (now gone into dust and ashes), would they have been like Kira? But he could not know the answer, and so he let it go and allowed himself to be entertained by them. Now a thought barged into his mind that he certainly could not welcome. If Mara had been born here, would she, like these girls, have had adroit tender hands and a smile like an embrace? Was he criticising Mara? How could he! Brave Mara – but fierce Mara; indomitable and tenacious Mara. But no one could say she was not stubborn and obstinate – she could no more have smiled, and yielded and teased and cajoled than … these girls could have gone a mile of that journey she and he had undergone. But, he was thinking, what a hard life she had had, never any ease, or lightness, never any … fun. What a word to apply to Mara; he almost felt ashamed – and he watched Marianthe’s girls at a kind of ball game they had, laughing and playing the fool. Oh, Mara, and I certainly didn’t make things easier for you, did I? But these thoughts were too difficult and painful, so he let them go and allowed himself to be entertained. He stood with Marianthe at her window, overlooking the northern seas, where sometimes appeared blocks of ice that had fallen from the cliffs – though they always melted fast in the sun. Below them was a blue dance of water that he knew could be so cold, but with the sun on it seemed a playfellow, with the intimacy of an invitation: come on in, join me … Dann asked Marianthe, holding her close from behind, his face on her shining black curls, if she would not like to go with him back up the cliffs and walk to the Centre, and from there go with him to see that amazing roar and rush of white water … even as he said it, he thought how dismal she would find the marshes and the chilly mists. ‘How could I leave my inn?’ she said, meaning that she did not want to. And now he dared to say that one day he believed she would have to. That morning he had made a trip to the town at the sea’s edge that had waves washing over its roofs. ‘Look over there,’ he said, tilting back her head by the chin, so she had to look up, to the distant icy gleams that were the ice mountains. Up there, he said to her, long long ago had been great cities, marvellous cities, finer than anything anywhere now – and he knew she was seeing in her mind’s eye the villages of the islands; you could not really call them towns. ‘It is hard for us to imagine those cities, and now anything like them is deep in the marshes up there on the southern shore.’ Marianthe leaned back against him, and rubbed her head against his cheek – he was tall, but she was almost as tall – and asked coaxingly why she should care about long ago. ‘Beautiful cities,’ he said, ‘with gardens and parks, that the ice covered, but it is going now, it is going so fast.’ But she mocked him and he laughed with her. ‘Come to bed, Dann.’ He had not been in her bed for three nights now and it was because, and he told her so, she was in the middle of her cycle, so she could conceive. She always laughed at him and was petulant, when he said this, asking how did he know, and anyway, she wanted a child, please, come on Dann. And this was now the painful point of division between them. She wanted a child, to keep him with her, and he very much did not. Marianthe had told her woman friends and the girls working at the inn, and they had told their men, and one evening, in the big main room, one of the fishermen called out that they had heard he knew the secrets of the bed. ‘Not of the bed,’ he said. ‘But of birth, when to conceive, yes.’ The room was full of men and women, and some children. By now he knew them all. Their faces had on them the same expression when they looked at him. Not antagonistic, exactly, but ready to be. He was always testing them, even when he did not mean to. Now one fisherman called out, ‘And where did you get all that clever stuff from, Dann? Perhaps it is too deep for us.’ Here it was again, a moment when something he said brought into question everything he had ever said, all his tales, his exploits. ‘Nothing clever about it,’ Dann said. ‘If you can count the days between one full moon and the next full moon, and you do that all the time, then you can count the intervals between a woman’s flows. It is simple. For five days in the middle of a woman’s cycle a woman can conceive.’ ‘You haven’t told us who told you. How do you know? How is it you know this and we don’t?’ A woman said this, and she was unfriendly. ‘Yes, you ask me how I know. Well, it is known. But only in some places. And that is the trouble. That is our trouble, all of us – do you see? Why is it you can travel to a new place and there is knowledge there that isn’t in other places? When my sister Mara arrived at the Agre Army – I told you that story – the general there taught her all kinds of things she didn’t know but he didn’t know about the means of controlling birth. He had never heard of it.’ Dann was standing by the great counter of the room where the casks of beer were, and the ranks of mugs. He was looking around at them all, from face to face, as if someone there could come out, there and then, with another bit of information that could fit in and make a whole. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘long ago, before the Ice came down up there’ – and he pointed in the direction of the ice cliffs – ‘all the land up there was covered with great cities and there was a great knowledge, which was lost, under the Ice. But it was found, some of it, and hidden in the sands – when there were sands and not marshes. Then bits and pieces of the old knowledge travelled, and it was known here and there, but never as a whole, except in the old Centre – but now it is in fragments there too.’ ‘And how do you know what you know?’ came a sardonic query, from the eldest of the fishermen. Real hostility was near now; they were all staring at him and their eyes were cold. Marianthe, behind the counter, began to weep. ‘Yes,’ said one of the younger fishermen, ‘he makes you cry; is that why you like him, Marianthe?’ That scene had been some days ago. And now, this afternoon, was the moment when Dann knew he had to go … ‘Marianthe,’ he said, ‘you know what I’m going to say.’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well, Marianthe, would you really be pleased if I went off leaving you with a baby? Would you?’ She was crying and would not answer. In the corner of the room was his old sack. And that was all he had, or needed, after such a long time here – how long? Durk had reminded him that it was nearly three years. He went down to the common-room, holding his old sack. All the eyes in the room turned to see Marianthe, pale and tragic. People were eating their midday meal after returning from fishing. One of the girls called out, ‘Some men were asking for you.’ ‘What?’ said Dann, and in an instant his security in this place, or anywhere on the islands, disappeared. What a fool he had been, thinking that the descent to the Bottom Sea and a few hops from island to island had been enough to … ‘Who were they?’ he asked. A fisherman called out, ‘They say you have a price on your head. What is your crime?’ Dann had already hitched his sack on to his shoulders and, seeing this, Durk was collecting his things too. ‘I told you, I ran away from the army in Shari. I was a general and I deserted.’ A man who didn’t like him said, ‘General, were you?’ ‘I told you that.’ ‘So your tales were true, then?’ someone said, half regretful, part sceptical still. Dann, standing there, a thin and at the moment griefstricken figure, so young – sometimes he still looked like a boy – did not look like a general, or anything soldierly, for that matter. Not that they had ever seen a soldier. ‘Nearly all were true,’ said Dann, thinking of how he had softened everything for them. He had never told them that once he had gambled away his sister, nor what had happened to him in the Towers – not even Marianthe, who knew of the scars on his body. ‘They were true,’ he said again, ‘but the very bad things I did not tell you.’ Marianthe was leaning on the bar counter, weeping. One of the girls put her arms round her and said, ‘Don’t, you’ll be ill.’ ‘You haven’t said what they looked like,’ said Dann, thinking of his old enemy, Kulik, who might or might not be dead. At last he got out of them that there were two men, not young, and yes, one had a scar. Well, plenty of people had scars; ‘up there’ they did, but not down here. Durk was beside Dann now, with his sack. The girls were bringing food for them to take. ‘Well,’ called a fisherman, from over his dish of soup and bread, ‘I suppose we’ll never hear the rest of your tales. Perhaps I’ll miss you, at that.’ ‘We’ll miss you,’ the girls said, and crowded around to kiss him and pet him. ‘Come back, come back,’ they mourned. And Dann embraced Marianthe, but swiftly, because of the watching people. ‘Why don’t you come up to the Centre?’ he whispered, but knew she never would – and she did not answer. ‘Goodbye, General,’ came from his chief antagonist, sounding quite friendly now. ‘And be careful as you go. Those men are nasty-looking types.’ Dann and Durk went to the boat, this time not stopping at every island, and to Durk’s, where his parents asked what had kept him so long. The girl Durk had wanted was with someone else and averted her eyes when she saw him. At the inn Dann heard again about the men who had been asking for him. He thought, When I get to the Centre I’ll be safe. In the morning, he sat in the boat as he had come, in the bows, like a passenger, Durk rowing from the middle, his back to Dann, like a boatman. Dann watched the great cliffs of the southern shore loom up, until Durk exclaimed, ‘Look!’ and rested his oars, and Dann stood to see better. Down the crevices and cracks and gulleys poured white, a smoking white … had ‘up there’ been flooded, had the marshes overflowed? And then they saw; it was mist that was seeping down the dark faces of the cliff. And Durk said he had never seen anything like that in all his time as a boatman and Dann slumped back on his seat, so relieved he could only say, ‘That’s all right, then.’ He had had such a vision of disaster, as if all the world of ‘up there’ had gone into water. Closer they drew, and closer: as the mists neared the Middle Sea they vanished, vanquished by the warmer airs of this happy sea … so Dann was seeing it, as the boat crunched on the gritty shore. That pouring weight of wet air, the mists, was speaking to him of loss, of sorrow, but that was not how he had set out from Durk’s inn, light-hearted and looking forward to – well, to what exactly? He did not love the Centre! No, it was Mara, he must see Mara, he would go to the Farm, he must. But he stood on the little beach and stared up, and the falling wet whiteness filled him with woe. He turned, and saw Durk there, with the boat’s rope in his hand, staring at him. That look, what did it mean? Not possible to pretend it away: Durk’s honest, and always friendly, face was … what? He was looking at Dann as if wanting to see right inside him. Dann was reminded of – yes, it was Griot, whose face was so often a reproach. ‘Well,’ said Dann, ‘and so I’m off.’ He turned away from Durk, and the look which was disturbing him, saying, ‘Some time, come and see me at the Centre. All you have to do is to walk for some days along the edge.’ He thought, and the dangers, and the ugliness, and the wet slipperiness … He said, his back still turned as he began to walk to the foot of the cliffs, ‘It’s easy, Durk, you’ll see,’ and thought that for Durk it would not be easy: he knew about boats and the sea and the safe work of the islands. He took his first step on the path up, and heard an oar splash. He felt that all the grey dank airs of the marshes had seeped into him, in a cold weight of … he was miserable about something: he had to admit it. He turned. A few paces from the shore Durk stood in his boat, still staring at Dann, who thought, We have been together all this time, he stayed away from his island and his girl because of me, he is my friend. These were new thoughts for Dann. He shouted, ‘Durk, come to the Centre, do come.’ Durk turned his back on Dann and sat, rowing hard – and out of Dann’s life. Dann watched him, thinking, he must turn round … but he didn’t. Dann started up the cliff, into the mists. He was at once soaked. And his face … but for lovely and loving Marianthe he did not shed one tear, or if he did, it was not in him to know it. He thought, struggling up the cliff: But that’s what I’ve always done. What’s the use of looking back and crying? If you have to leave a place … leave a person … then, that’s it, you leave. I’ve been doing it all my life, haven’t I? It took all day to reach the top, and then he heard voices, but he did not know the languages. He sheltered, wet and uncomfortable, under a rock. He was thinking, Am I mad, am I really, really mad to leave ‘down there’ – with its delightful airs, its balmy winds, its peaceful sunny islands? It is the nicest, friendliest place I have ever been in. After the soft bed of Marianthe his stony sleep was fitful and he woke early, thinking to get on to the path before the refugees filled it. But there was already a stream of desperate people walking there. Dann slipped into the stream and became one of them, so they did not eye his heavy sack, and the possibility of food. Who were they, these fugitives? They were not the same as those he had seen three years before. Another war? Where? What was this language, or languages? He walked along, brisk and healthy, and attracted looks because of his difference from these weary, starving people. Then, by the side of the track, he saw a tumble of white bones, and he stepped out of the crowd and stood by them. The long bones had teeth marks and one had been cracked for the marrow. No heath bird had done that. What animals lived on these moors? Probably some snow dogs did. The two youngsters – these were their bones. Dann had never imagined what he and Mara might have looked like to observers, friendly and unfriendly, on their journey north. Not until he saw the two youngsters, seemingly blown towards him by the marshy winds, until he caught them, had he ever thought how Mara and he had been seen, but now here they were, scattered bones by the roadside. That’s Mara and me, thought Dann – if we had been unlucky. And he stood there, as if on watch, until he bent and picked little sprigs of heather and put them in the eye sockets of the two clean young skulls. Soon afterwards he saw a dark crest of woods on the rise ahead and knew it would be crowded with people at last able to sit down on solid ground that was dry. And so it was; a lot of people, very many sitting and lying under the trees. There were children, crying from hunger. Not far was Kass’s little house, out of sight of these desperate ones, and Dann went towards it, carefully, not attracting attention. When he reached it he saw the door was open and on the step a large white beast who, seeing him, lifted its head and howled. It came bounding towards him, and lay before him and rolled, and barked, licking his legs. Dann was so busy squatting to greet Ruff that he did not at once notice Kass, but she was not alone. There was a man with her, a Thores, like her, short and strong – and dangerously alert to everything. Kass called out, ‘See, he knows you, he’s been waiting for you, he’s been waiting for days now and the nights too, looking out …’ And to the man she said, ‘This is Dann, I told you.’ What she had told her husband Dann could not know; he was being given not hostile, but wary and knowledgeable looks. He was invited in, first by Kass: ‘This is Noll,’ and then by Noll. He had found them at table and was glad of it: it was a good way to the Centre and his food had to last. The snow dog was told to sit in the open door, to be seen, and to frighten off any refugees sharp enough to find their way there. Noll had come from the cities of Tundra with enough money to keep them going, but he would have to return. The food and stores he had brought, and the money, were already depleted. This was an amiable enough man, but on guard, and sharp, and Dann was feeling relief that Noll was the kind of fellow he understood, someone who knew hardship. Already the islands were seeming to him like a kindly story or dream, and Durk’s smiling (and reproachful) face – but Dann did not want to recognise that – a part of the past, and an old tale. Yes, the fishermen had to face storms, sometimes, but there was something down there that sapped and enervated. In spite of the damp, and the cold of the mists that rolled through the trees from the marshes, Dann thought, This is much more my line. Kass did not hide from her husband that she was pleased to see Dann and even took his hand and held it, in front of him. Noll merely smiled, and then said, ‘Yes, you’re welcome.’ The snow dog came from his post at the door to Dann, put his head on his arm and whined. ‘This animal has looked after me well,’ said Kass. ‘I don’t know how often I’ve had desperadoes banging at the door, but Ruff’s barking sent them off again.’ And now Dann, his arms round Ruff, who would not leave him, told how he had gone down the cliffs to the Bottom Sea and the islands, but did not mention Marianthe, though Kass’s eyes were on his face to see if she could find the shadow of a woman on it. These two were listening as if to tales from an imagined place, and kept saying that one day they would make the trip to the Bottom Sea and find out for themselves what strange folk lived down there, and discover the forests of trees they had never seen. When night came Dann lay on a pallet on the floor, and thought of how on that bed up there he had lain with Kass and the snow puppy, now this great shaggy beast who lay by him as close as he could press, whining his happiness that Dann was there. Dann was thinking that Kass had been good to him, and then – and this was a new thought for him – that he had been good to Kass. He had not stopped to wonder before if he had been good to or for a person. It was not a sentiment one associated with Kira. Surely he had been good to Mara? But the question did not arise. She was Mara and he was Dann, and that was all that had to be said. And Marianthe? No, that was something else. But with Kass he had to think first of kindness, and how she had held him when he wept, and had nourished the pup. In the morning he shared their meal, and at last said he must go. Down the hill the woods were still full of the fugitives, new ones probably. And now the snow dog was whining in anxiety, and he actually took Dann’s sleeve in his teeth and pulled him. ‘He knows you are going,’ said Kass. ‘He doesn’t want you to go.’ And her eyes told Dann she didn’t want him to go either. Her husband, in possession, merely smiled, pleasantly enough, and would not be sorry when Dann left. Ruff followed Dann to the door. Noll said, ‘He knows you saved his life.’ Dann stroked the snow dog, and then hugged him and said, ‘Goodbye, Ruff,’ but the animal came with him out of the door and looked back at Kass and Noll and barked, but followed Dann. ‘Oh, Ruff,’ said Kass, ‘you’re leaving me.’ The dog whined, looking at her, but kept on after Dann who was trying not to look back and tempt the animal away. Now Kass ran after Dann with bread off the table, and rations for the animal, and some fish. She said to Dann, out of earshot of her husband, ‘Come back and see me, you and Ruff, come back.’ Dann said aloud that if she kept a lookout she would see new snow dogs coming up the cliff and one could take the place of Ruff, for a guard dog. She did not say it would not be the same, but knelt by the great dog and put her arms round him, and Ruff licked her face. Then she got up and, without looking back at Dann and Ruff, went to her husband. ‘So, Ruff, you remembered me so well after all this time’ and before he reached the stream of refugees, he knelt by Ruff and held him. The dog put his head on Dann’s shoulder and Dann was crying again. He’s my friend, Dann was thinking. The stream of refugees became agitated when they saw Dann with the snow dog. Heads turned, hands went to knives and sticks were raised. Dann called out, ‘It’s all right, he’s tame,’ in one language and then another but no one understood. More effective was how he stepped into the stream, his knife in his hand. People fell back behind him and left a space on either side of him. Dann was afraid of a stone thrown from behind his back, but was reassured by Ruff’s thick coat – no stone could make an impression on that – although there was his long tender muzzle, his bright eyes, emerging from the ruff, his small, neat ears. So Dann kept turning to make sure no one was creeping up to attack the beast. No one did. They were too full of frightened thoughts of their hunger, of how to get to safety. And they went along, Dann and his snow dog, who kept looking up at Dann to see if all was well, and so the day went by until he began looking for the place where he had stepped off the path and seen whitish masses floating in a pool. It was further than he expected. So slowly were they travelling today, because of the wariness over Ruff and having to stop, whereas when he had run to find help for the pup he had been going as fast as he could – faster than he had known. At last he saw a pattern of pools he recognised and stepped from the stream of people on to a soggy path between the pools. And there in the water he saw two foamy white masses. Ruff was by him, looking where he looked. He glanced up to see Dann’s face, looked back at the water. Then he began to whine anxiously and it seemed he was going to jump into the water. Dann took a good hold of the snow dog and said, ‘No, Ruff, no, Ruff, no.’ The water was very cold. Films and crinkles of ice lay here and there on it and enclosed the stems of reeds. All that time had passed, but the bubbling white was still there: not the flesh and the bones, only the mats of hair. Ruff let out a howl, causing the travellers on the path to stop and look. Dann smoothed his head, thinking how he had stood here with the dead weight of the soaked young animal against him. Dann led him to the soggy path and all the way Ruff was looking back, even when the pool became screened with reeds. He remembered, or half remembered, and Dann kept his hand on the animal’s head as they rejoined the people and talked to him: ‘Ruff, Ruff, you’re safe, I’ll look after you. I’ll always look after you.’ The snow dog barked, in answer, and kept looking up at Dann for reassurance. Now the night was coming and there was a difficulty. On this path there was nowhere to shelter, as he knew from his journey the other way. A place would have to be found down the side of the cliff. There were bushes, but quite a way down and the stronger refugees would try to reach them. He was hungry and so was Ruff, but Dann had seen people eyeing his bulging sack and he knew what they would do if they saw him giving precious food to a hated snow dog. At last he saw a great boulder, resting on another. There was a ledge. It would take ingenuity to climb up there and Dann doubted whether anyone would try it. He slid down over shale to the boulder and found a way up; Ruff followed him and lay down. There below them was the gleam of the Bottom Sea, and to the east dark blobs that were the islands. The evening sky was a pearly lake, flushed pink. The bushes back near the path were crowded with people, already fighting off others who were trying to crowd in. Now Dann could open his sack and give some bread and some fish to Ruff. The animal had been drinking from the marshes as they came. Soon there was a moon and Dann was glad of it: he saw shadows creeping towards the boulder and he shouted and saw scuttling off some lads, who had planned to join them. Ruff was moving about restlessly, and whining, but Dann held his muzzle shut and whispered, ‘Don’t bark, don’t.’ And Ruff lay down, head on his great white paws, and was silent, watching the side of the cliff. So passed the night and the first light saw the refugees crowding back to the path. Some had used their clothes to scoop up marsh fish, and soggy fishbones lay about. That next night was spent in a hollow between rocks a good way from the travellers. Ruff lay close to Dann, who was glad of the warmth. More days passed, and then a wide enough track ran off south through marshes that were shallower here, not so dangerous. Part of the refugee stream turned off on the track, which lay on a route through Tundra to its frontier. Well, they wouldn’t find much comfort there, and he tried to tell them so, but one after another they turned sullen and uncomprehending eyes on him. Those who still kept to the path on the cliff’s edge were, it seemed, because there were fewer of them, relieved of the necessity for keeping the peace. They began quarrelling and fighting, if they suspected one had food hidden. They surrounded Dann and the snow dog, for Dann’s sack, which was much depleted now, but still had a promising bulge. Ruff barked and made short rushes at them, and they fell back; Dann led off the track into a path that went south-west, still through bogs and marshes, but they were not so bad. The ground soon became a little higher, there were some bushes and clumps of tall reeds. There came into sight a building, not more than a shed, on the right of the track. On the door of this shed was scrawled ‘No Refugees Here. Keep off’. He knocked and shouted, ‘I’m not a refugee. I can pay.’ No sound or movement from inside. He knocked again, a shutter moved and the face of a scowling old woman appeared. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Let me in. I’ll pay for food and shelter.’ ‘I’m not having a snow dog here.’ ‘He’s tame, he won’t hurt you.’ ‘No, go away.’ ‘He can keep guard,’ shouted Dann. At last the door, which was made of thick reeds held together by leather thongs, moved open and an old man’s voice said, ‘Be quick, then.’ Two old people stood facing him, but looking at the great beast, who sat down at once and looked at them. The room was not large, and it was dark, with a single fish-oil lamp on a rough table. The walls were of turves and the roof of reeds. Dann said, ‘I’ll pay you for some food for me and the animal.’ ‘Then you must leave,’ said the old woman, who showed that she was afraid of Ruff. ‘I’ll pay you for letting us sleep here, on the floor.’ At this moment there were shouts and knocks on the door, which would give way in another instant. The old woman swore and shouted abuse. The old man was peering out through cracks in the shutter. ‘Bark, Ruff,’ said Dann. Ruff understood and barked loudly. The people outside ran off. ‘He’s a guard dog,’ said Dann. ‘Very well,’ said the old woman. She said something to the old man, and Dann didn’t recognise the language. ‘Where are you from?’ asked Dann. Their faces, under the dirt, were pallid, and their hair pale too. ‘Are you Albs?’ ‘What’s that to you?’ demanded the old man, afraid. ‘I have friends who are Albs,’ said Dann. ‘We are half Albs,’ said the old woman. ‘And that half is enough to make us enemies, so they think.’ ‘I know the trouble Albs have,’ said Dann. ‘Do you? That’s nice for you, then.’ ‘I am from Rustam,’ said Dann casually, to see what they would say. ‘Rustam, where’s that?’ ‘A long, long way south, beyond Charad, beyond the river towns, beyond Chelops.’ ‘We hear a lot of travellers’ tales – thieves and liars, that’s what they are,’ said the old woman. Outside, moonlight showed that some refugees had found this higher drier track and were lying on it, sleeping. ‘There are quite a few children out there,’ Dann said – to see what they would say. ‘Children grow up to be thieves and rascals.’ Dann was given a bowl of marsh fish, muddy and grey, with a porridge of vegetables thickened with meal. Ruff got the same: well, he didn’t have much better at Kass’s house. Then the old woman said, ‘Now, you and that animal sit near the door and if there’s knocking, make him bark.’ Dann settled near the door, the dog beside him. He thought that there would probably not be disturbances now it was late. But once knocks did rouse them all, and the dog barked and the intruder left. ‘We don’t like snow dogs,’ said the old woman, from her ragged bed on the floor. ‘We kill them if we can.’ ‘Why don’t you make one into a guard dog?’ But in the corner she muttered and gloomed and the old man, who clearly did what he was told, said that snow dogs were dangerous, everyone knew that. Dann slept sitting, with the snow dog lying close, both glad of the warmth. They must be very cold out there, those poor people … Dann surprised himself with this thought. He did not see the use of sympathising with people in trouble, if he could not make cause with them, in some way. But he was thinking that once he and Mara had been – often enough – two frightened youngsters among refugees and outcasts, just like those out there in the cold moonlight that sifted over them from wet cloud. In the very early morning, as the light came, he woke and looked at the mud floor, the turf walls, the low reed roof that leaked in places, and thought that this was called a house. It was worse by far than Kass’s. Under the marshes were the marvellous great cities that had sunk through the mud. Why was it such cities were not built now? He remembered the towns he and Mara had travelled through, fine towns, but far from the drowned cities around him – and such a longing gripped him for the glories of that lost time that he groaned. Ruff woke and licked his hands. ‘Why?’ he was muttering. ‘Why, Ruff? I don’t understand how it could happen. That – and then this.’ He coughed, and Ruff barked softly, and the two old ones woke. ‘So, you’re off, then?’ said the old woman. ‘Not without our breakfast.’ Again they got a kind of porridge, with vegetables. ‘Where are you going?’ the woman wanted to know. ‘To the Centre.’ ‘Then what are you doing in a poor place like this?’ Dann said he had come from the east, had been down in the islands, but the old people were uneasy, and did not want to know any more. ‘We hear the islands do well enough,’ said the old man angrily. Dann asked, as casually as he could, what was heard about the Centre these days. ‘There are ruffians there now, they say. I don’t know what the old Mahondis would say.’ ‘I am a Mahondi,’ said Dann, remembering what it had once meant to say that. ‘Then you’ll know about the young prince. Everyone is waiting for him to put things right.’ Dann was going to say, Hasn’t the time gone past for princes? – but decided not to. They were so old: in the cold morning light they were like old ghosts. A banging at the door. Ruff barked; again the sound of running feet. ‘It seems to me we’ve done well enough by you, keeping them all away,’ said Dann. ‘He’s right,’ said the old man. ‘Let him stay. He and that animal can keep watch and we can get some sleep.’ ‘Thanks,’ said Dann, ‘but we’ll be off. And thanks for your hospitality.’ He had meant this last to be sarcastic, but those two old things were making him feel as if he were hitting babies. ‘Perhaps you could ask your Alb friends to visit us?’ said the old woman. ‘There’s an Alb settlement not too far from here,’ he said, and she said, ‘They don’t want to know us, because of the half of us not Alb.’ These two old toddlers could not get much further than the clifftop track, if as far as that. ‘It would be nice to see something of our kind’ – and even the nets of wrinkles on her face and the old sunk eyes seemed to be pleading. Dann thought of fastidious Leta in this hut but said nevertheless, ‘I’ll tell them to visit you.’ The old woman began to cry, and then the old man, in sympathy. ‘Don’t leave us,’ she said, and then he said it too. ‘Why don’t you invite the next snow dog in?’ said Dann. ‘They make good companions.’ He and Ruff left, making their way on little-used paths back to the track westwards, and there they went on until one crossroad led to the Centre and the other to the Farm. Mara, there’s Mara, he was thinking, longing to go to her, but he took a few steps and came back, hesitated. The snow dog went forward and Dann followed, but stopped. The snow dog stopped, his eyes on Dann’s face. It was as if the way west were barred with a NO, like a dark cloud. He wanted so much to go to the Farm, but could not. Ruff came and sat by his knees, looking up, then licking his hands, and by this Dann knew the dog was sensing more than his indecision. When Dann was sad, Ruff knew it. ‘Why can’t I go, Ruff?’ he enquired aloud, standing there by the grey watery wastes, the white marsh birds standing in their pools, or calling and looking for fish and frogs as they floated low, the wind in their feathers. ‘Why can’t I?’ And he set himself northwards, to the Centre. Long before he reached it he saw it rise up there, its top gone into low cloud. How large it was, how imposing – if one didn’t know about the ruins and halfruins, the waters soaking its northern and western edges, the smell of damp and rot. No wonder it had dominated the whole area – no, the whole of Ifrik – for so long. With the sun coming on to it from the western sky it gleamed, it glowed, the golden cloud crowning it, the outer walls shining. Dann went towards it, thinking now of Griot, who had every reason for reproach, noting changes, one of them being the sentry who challenged him at the gate. He wore something like a uniform: brown baggy top, baggy trousers, a red blanket over one shoulder. A surge of rage overwhelmed him; he pushed aside the youth, whose eyes were on the snow dog. Ruff disdained even to growl. In the great hall, where he and Mara had waited to be recognised, he saw Griot sitting at a table, which had on it the frames with beads used for counting, and piles of reed tablets. Dann approached quietly. Griot raised his head and at once a smile appeared, like an embrace. Griot stood and his arms did rise, but fell again as he put on an expression more suitable for a soldier, though he need not have bothered: he was an embodied cry of joy. ‘Dann … Sir … General …’ ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Dann, who was, at that moment. ‘You’ve been such a long time.’ ‘Yes, I know. I was detained by a witch on an island in the Bottom Sea.’ He was trying to jest, but amended, ‘No, I was joking, it is pleasant down there.’ Now Dann saw something in Griot’s face that made him stand, quietly, on guard, waiting: was Griot going to speak? No. Dann asked, ‘Tell me how things are going.’ Griot came out from behind his table and, standing at ease, as he had been taught when a new soldier under Dann’s command, ‘We have six hundred trained men now, sir.’ ‘Six hundred.’ ‘We could have as many as we like, so many come to the Centre from the east.’ Here Ruff went forward to inspect this new friend, his heavy tail wagging. ‘We have quite a few of these snow dogs trained as guards,’ said Griot, stroking the animal’s head. ‘People seem to be afraid of them.’ ‘Enemies have good reason to be afraid of them.’ ‘So, what are those reed huts I saw coming in – they’re new.’ ‘Barracks. And we must build more.’ ‘And what are we going to do with this army?’ ‘Yes, that’s it, but you’ll have heard about Tundra. It’s falling apart. There are two factions. There will be more, we think.’ Dann noted the we. ‘The administration is hardly working. One faction has sent us messages, to join them. It’s the prestige of the Centre, you see, sir.’ Griot hesitated, then went bravely on. ‘It’s your prestige, everyone knows you’re here, in command.’ ‘And the other faction, presumably the weaker?’ ‘They’re just – useless. It will be a walkover.’ ‘I see. And do you know how many refugees are pouring into Tundra from the east?’ ‘Yes, we know. Many turn up here. The majority. I have a friend in Tundra, he keeps me informed.’ ‘So, Griot, you have a spy system?’ ‘Yes – yes, sir, I do. And it is very efficient.’ ‘Well done, Griot. I see our army in Agre trained you well.’ ‘It was Shabis.’ And at the mention of Shabis Griot’s eyes were full of – what? Dann was on the point of asking, but again evaded with, ‘And how are you feeding all these people?’ ‘We are growing grains and vegetables on the foothills of the mountain, where it’s dry. And we have a lot of animals now – there are so many empty buildings on the outskirts.’ ‘Why did you build the huts, then?’ ‘First, if people are in the Centre they pilfer, and then, keeping the men in barracks makes for uniformity. The empty buildings come in every size and shape, but the huts take two men each or two women and no one can complain about favouritism.’ There was a pause here. Griot was standing on one side of the table, Dann on the other, the snow dog sitting where he could observe them: his eyes went from face to face and his tail wasn’t wagging now. ‘Are you hungry?’ Griot asked, postponing the moment, whatever it was. ‘No, but I am sure Ruff is.’ Griot went to the door and Ruff went with him. Griot shouted orders and returned. ‘You’re honoured, Griot, he doesn’t make friends with everyone.’ ‘I get along with snow dogs. I train ours.’ ‘Tell me more abut the provisioning,’ said Dann, and Griot did so until a bowl of food arrived and was set down. The soldier who brought it kept his distance from the snow dog. Ruff ate, the two men sat and watched. ‘Better than he’s had in his life. I don’t think much meat has come his way.’ A pause, and now Dann could not help himself. ‘Out with it, what is it?’ Griot sat silent, and then said in a low voice, ‘Don’t blame me for what I have to tell you. Bad enough to have to sit on the news for so long …’ ‘Out with it.’ ‘Mara’s dead. She died when the child was born.’ Griot averted his eyes from Dann’s face. Dann said in a matter-of-fact way, ‘Of course. I knew it. That makes sense. Yes.’ Griot risked a swift glance. ‘I knew it all the time, I must have,’ said Dann. ‘Otherwise, why …’ and he fell silent. ‘The message came just after you left.’ Dann sat on, not moving. The dog came to him, put his head on his knee and whined. Dann rose up from his chair mechanically, slowly, and stood, hands out, palms up. He stared down at them. ‘Of course,’ he said in the same reasonable voice. ‘Yes, that’s it.’ And then, to Griot, ‘You say Mara’s dead?’ ‘Yes, she’s dead, but the child is alive. You’ve been gone a good bit, sir. The child …’ ‘It killed Mara,’ said Dann. He began moving about, not consistently or purposefully, but he took a step, stopped, and again there was that way of staring at his hands; he took another step or two, whirled about as if ready to attack someone, stood glaring. Ruff was following him, looking up at his face. Griot watched them both. Dann took another jerky step or two, then stopped. ‘Mara,’ said Dann. ‘Mara’ in a loud emphatic voice, arguing with someone invisible, so it seemed, and then threatening: ‘Mara dead? No, no, no,’ and now he shouted, all defiance, and he kicked out wildly, just missing Ruff, who crept under the table. Then in the same erratic jerky way he sat down at the table and stared at Griot. ‘You knew her?’ he said. ‘Yes, I was at the Farm.’ ‘I suppose the other one, Kira – Kira had her baby and it’s alive?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I suppose we could count on that,’ said Dann grimly, and Griot, knowing exactly why he said it and feeling with him, said, ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘What am I going to do?’ Dann asked Griot, and Griot, all pain for Dann, muttered, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, Dann, sir …’ Dann got up again and began on his jerky inconsequential progress. He was talking nonsense, names of places and people, ejaculations of protest and anger, and Griot was not able to follow it. At one point he asked about the old woman, and Griot said that she was dead. ‘She wanted me as a stud, and Mara as a brood animal.’ ‘Yes, I know.’ This tale, like the others of Dann’s and Mara’s adventures, was known generally, but sometimes told fantastically. The custodians of the Centre had waited for the rightful prince and princess to arrive and start a new dynasty of the royal ruling family, but they had refused. So far so good. But then the public imagination had created a battle where the old pair were killed because they would not share the secret knowledge of the Centre, and Dann and Mara escaped to found their own dynasty, and would return to the Centre to take over … all of Ifrik, all of Tundra, or however far the geographical knowledge of the teller extended. And in these versions Dann had become a great conquering general who had fought his way here from far down Ifrik. Dann talked, then muttered, while Griot listened and Ruff watched from under the table. Dann was more than a little mad, and at last Griot got up and said, ‘Dann, sir, General, you must go to sleep. You’ll be ill. You are ill.’ ‘What am I going to do, Griot?’ And Dann gripped Griot by the shoulders and stared close into his face. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ ‘Yes, sir. Just come with me. Now come.’ For all the time Dann had been gone, two rooms had waited for his return. One was Dann’s and Griot knew this, but the other had been Mara’s, and that Griot did not know. When Dann stumbled through this room and looked down at the bed where Mara had been, he began crying. Griot led him through this room and to the next. It had a door open on to the square where the soldiers drilled, and this Griot shut. He led Dann to the bed and, when he did not do more than stare down at it, Griot helped him lie down. Ruff lay by the bed, keeping his distance. Griot went off and returned with a sticky black lump which he showed to Dann. ‘It’s poppy,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep.’ At this Dann shot up, and grabbed Griot by the shoulders and shook him. With a terrible laugh he shouted, ‘So, you want to kill me.’ Griot had seldom smoked the stuff, he did not care for it. He had no idea what Dann meant; Dann saw that anxious puzzled face and let him go. ‘It did nearly kill me once,’ he said and, of his own accord, lay down again. ‘The soldiers use it. They burn it. They like the fumes.’ ‘Then forbid it.’ ‘There’s not much of it in the camp.’ ‘I said – forbid it. That’s an order, Griot.’ He sounded sane enough. Griot covered Dann’s legs with a blanket and said, ‘Call me, if you want me,’ and went out. He sat on the bed in the room next door and heard howling. Was that Ruff? No, it was Dann, and Ruff was whining in sympathy. Griot put his head in his hands and listened. At last there was silence. He crept to the door; Dann was asleep, his arms round the snow dog’s neck. Ruff was not asleep. Now Dann was ill, and it went on, and time went on, and Griot looked after Dann, not knowing if what he was doing was right. Yet Dann did take some responsibility for himself. First, he told Griot that if he ever asked for poppy Griot must refuse. ‘That’s an order, Griot.’ He demanded to be kept supplied with jugs of the beer the soldiers made, alcoholic if enough of it was drunk, and he stayed in his room, sometimes walking about, sometimes lying on the bed, and he talked to himself or to Mara, or to the snow dog. He kept himself drunk. When he walked about, Ruff went with him, step for step, and at night Ruff lay close, and licked his hands and face. Dann told Griot he must call Ruff to go out, have his meals and run around a little. Ruff went willingly with Griot and he made the acquaintance of the other snow dogs – a tricky thing this, because Ruff had not been with others of his kind. But they got on well enough, provided Ruff kept his distance. He never became one of their pack. He always wanted to return to Dann. Weeks passed. Griot was thinking that now was the time to invade the Tundra cities; all the news he was getting confirmed this, but he needed Dann because he was General Dann and known through all of Tundra. And, too, Griot needed Dann for his superior military knowledge. Though Dann was quite crazy at this time, this did not prevent him from emerging on occasion, to sit at the table with Griot, advising on this and that. The advice was sensible and Griot relied on it. The soldiers talked among themselves, of course, because they were on duty as guards outside Dann’s room, and sometimes inside the room, when Dann was worse than usual. Their General was mad, they all knew, but for some reason this did not seem to alarm them. They spoke of him always with respect – more, it was love, Griot thought, and this did not surprise him. But Dann did not seem to be getting better, so Griot decided to make the trip to the Farm, to talk to Shabis and ask help from Leta, who had so much knowledge of plants and medicines. He told Dann he was going to make a reconnaissance trip to Tundra’s cities. Dann said he wanted a soldier in Griot’s place, male, not a woman. Because this man organised Dann’s bathing, bringing the big basins and the hot water, and persuading Dann into the water, he saw the scars around Dann’s waist, which he could not account for, but which looked as if at some point Dann had worn a slave chain, whose barbs had torn him; and he saw, too, the scars on Dann’s buttocks radiating out from his anus. The word got around the camp about these cruel scars, and Dann’s reputation was enhanced, in the direction of awesomeness and the unknown. And their General had been a slave – that helped them to understand his present illness. Then the guard soldier let drop that Griot had gone to the Farm and, while Dann understood the deception, it hurt to think of Griot there, at that place which in his mind was like a soothing dream, with its windy Western Sea, its streams of running water and the old house … but Kira was there, and he did not want to think of his child, who was now getting on for four. And he certainly didn’t want to think of Mara’s child. Griot set off, four soldiers marching behind him. With Tundra collapsing the roads were even more unsafe. He could watch out for attacks from the front. The soldiers were just within hearing distance. He listened to gossip from the camp and on the whole liked what he overheard. The soldiers had all been refugees, and often did not know each other’s languages. Griot had instituted compulsory lessons in Tundra, and this is what they were talking, saying they looked forward to when they could spread themselves over the spaces of Tundra: it was so cramped in the camp. Griot began thinking about his own life, but from that point in it when he could match this Griot here with that Griot, who had arrived as a fugitive boy at the Agre camps in Charad and was at once put into training to become a soldier. Before that – no, he did not much enjoy thinking about it. He would make himself remember it all – later. Agre had made him: now he knew it was Shabis who had made him, who was then the big General so far above him he knew only his name and sometimes saw him: ‘There, there he is, that’s Shabis.’ He was under Dann’s immediate command, the handsome, daring young officer, whom he hero-worshipped. Griot marched to Shari behind General Dann, as he had become, and when the Hennes armies invaded Shari and he heard that Dann had run from Shari, Griot did too. He had been in that mass of refugees that flooded Karas, but then he lost Dann’s trail and could not get news. He was a runaway soldier and in danger of being recaptured and punished – perhaps executed. He had heard there was a price on Dann’s head. About Mara he did not know. He had actually heard her address the soldiers in the public square in Agre, but he had not immediately connected that lanky fishbone of a girl with the beauty he had seen at the Farm. He made his way to Tundra, always in danger, worked when he could and, when he thought of the safety of the Agre Army, wished he had not run away. Then he heard by chance that General Dann, with his sister, was in a farm away to the west, and there he went, arriving just after Dann had left. Griot recognised Shabis at once, but did not know Mara. He asked for work. He knew about farming, having served with the agricultural detachments in the Agre Army. They gave him a room and their trust but he knew Kira did not like that. For her, he was a menial. But Mara and Shabis, and the others, Daulis and the two Albs, treated him like one of them. He had never known a family, but suspected this must be one. And soon it would be more of one, because both Mara and Kira were pregnant. Kira complained: that was her style. Pettishly or angrily, she complained. Mara soothed her and kept her in order; that was how Griot saw it. The couple, Shabis and Mara, were at the centre of this family, and Kira was like the awkward child. Griot had spent his life – that is, the one before arriving in Agre – watching, always on guard, seeing everything, faces, gestures, little movements of the eyes, a hardly perceptible grimace, or smirk, or sneer, or smile; that is how he had learned about life, about people. And he knew that not everyone had his perceptiveness: he was often surprised at how little they ordinarily saw. Here, at the Farm, he was returned, as far as dangers and threats went, to his pre-Agre condition. Not because of Shabis, or Mara – it was Kira he had to watch. Now he worked hard, was careful never to presume, kept out of Kira’s way and watched them all. He knew Mara missed her brother, not because she complained, but because they talked often of Dann and she sighed, and Shabis would put his hand on hers or draw her to him in an embrace. Kira saw this satirically – unkindly. When she spoke of Dann it was as of a possession she had mislaid. As her pregnancy went on she grew very large and did really suffer. The winds were blowing dry and cold, and then dry and warm, while Kira lay around with her feet up and began ordering Griot about, until he said to her, with the others all present, that he was not her servant. ‘You are if I say you are,’ she snapped, and at once Mara and Shabis corrected her. ‘We are having no servants or slaves here, Kira.’ Then she began prefacing her commands with a sarcastic please – fetch her this and get her that. When she got him to wait on her she smiled, and smirked – like a child, Griot thought. Mara was not well either, and it annoyed Griot – and, he could see, the others – that she consoled and helped Kira but got no kindness in return. Then there was a fearful row, not long before the women were due to give birth, with Kira shrieking that if Griot wanted to stay he must do as he was told. Griot knew that his labour was needed at the Farm, and tried to stick it out but then Kira actually tried to hit him and he left, apologising to Shabis and Mara. He went to the Centre, and there was Dann. That Dann did not greet him with the inward upwelling of feeling – you could call it rapture or at least intense happiness – which Griot felt, seemed to Griot only right: he had been one of Dann’s soldiers, that was all. But to be with Dann, working for him, serving him, seemed to Griot not only a reward for his long worship of Dann, but it had a special rightness, like a gift from – Fate, or whatever you called it. Griot had not gone in for gods and deities, though he had seen many different kinds in his short life, but now he was wondering if there wasn’t one who had a specially kind eye out for him. Otherwise, how to account for his good fortune – landing in Agre, under officer Dann, hearing about Dann at the Farm, then finding him here at the Centre, which was so wonderfully equipped to accommodate Griot’s plans. He could say – he was prepared to – that Dann’s going away for so long was hardly a kindness to Griot, but then he had made good use of the time, moulding and making his army, examining the resources of the Centre. He could have said that Dann being so very ill was hardly a beneficent provision of Fate, or whatever little god it was – Griot was modest, he awarded himself only a minor deity – but having nursed Dann now for weeks he at least knew his hero had faults. However, those he decided to see as signs or guarantees of a future largeness of destiny. And now he was going back to the Farm, and it was Kira he thought of, but carefully warding off misfortune with the kind of wary respect a spiteful and anarchic person does demand. He left the soldiers at the inn, not wanting to burden the Farm with their lodging and food, always short, he knew, and said he would be back in a day or so. As he walked up to the house, the Western Sea noisy on the right hand, two dogs came down to greet him: they knew him. On the veranda Kira stood, fatter than she had been, a large woman in a purple gown, her hair curled and oiled, a flower in it, watching his approach. ‘Good greetings to you,’ he said, getting in first, to establish the note he intended for his stay. ‘Have you come to see me?’ she demanded. Now this was really odd of her, and it set Griot back. ‘No, Kira, I’ve come to see Shabis.’ ‘Oh, no one comes to visit me,’ she complained and he noted that peevishness was still the rule. Down the side of the house, on a level sandy place, two little girls were playing, and the two Albs were with them. Daulis was on the veranda, and his greeting smile was genuine. Griot sat, and the two dogs lay down beside him. To see these creatures tamed in the service of people was to know Ruff’s wildness, and the large freedoms of the snow dogs, who owed only some of their allegiance to people. Griot thought for the first time how easily those great white beasts could become a pack and turn on their guardians. Could Ruff turn on Dann? Hard to think that. Kira settled her billows of purple skirt into a chair and enquired, ‘And how is my dear Dann?’ Griot was not going to tell Kira how Dann was, knowing she would take advantage of it if she could. Yet, with people coming this way from the Centre on their way down the coast, she must have heard, or would hear. ‘Dann has been on a long visit to the Bottom Sea,’ he said and, as she pressed for more, he kept fending her off, saying, ‘He went fishing with the fishing fleet.’ ‘He saw the ice mountains from up close,’ and then Shabis came and Griot stood, waiting for his greeting, knowing from that kindly face that Shabis was pleased to see him – and that he was muting his greeting because of Kira. Shabis nodded at Griot to sit, and sat himself. He looked older and his loss of Mara had sapped him of some vital substance, some buoyancy that had infused his whole being when Mara had been with him. He was a tall, too thin man, and greying. It had to be acknowledged that this soldier was very far from what he had been. Griot wanted to talk to Shabis alone, and now began an unpleasant little game, where Kira prevented Dann and Shabis from going aside to talk. When at last they went into the house to evade her she went with them and all that evening during the meal she kept up a chatter designed to prevent her being forgotten, even for a moment. And she had changed: Griot’s covert glances at that pretty face, with its many little tricks of lip and eye and look and smile, told him that whatever had been there to like, and admire, had gone: and her voice, too, had changed. Everything had changed since Griot had left. Mara had been some sort of centre for this family, but it was not one now. She had held it together. And she had kept Kira out of its centre, where she tried to be. The two little girls, both delightful and – well, like little girls, Griot supposed, who had had no contact with children since he had been one – were well behaved, but Griot noted that Tamar, Mara’s child, stayed close to her father, and when she looked at Kira she was apprehensive. Kira ordered not only her own child, Rhea, to do this and that, sit up, not fidget, not eat so fast and so on, but Tamar too, though the two Albs, Leta and Donna, were in charge of them. At last Shabis said, ‘That’s enough, Kira,’ a rebuke with an authority that went far beyond the present situation. Kira pouted, and sulked. When the time came for goodnights, Tamar was going past Kira, who said, ‘What’s this, no kiss for Kira?’ The child blew Kira a kiss, but she was not going to be allowed to get away with that. Griot saw how they all, Shabis, Leta, Daulis and Donna, watched as the child ran up to Kira and lifted her face up for a kiss – Tamar was pretending to laugh but she was frightened. And Kira made a great ugly face – a joke, of course – and when she bent to the kiss, made the face even more threatening, so that the child broke away and ran to Leta. ‘What a little cry-baby,’ said Kira. The little girls were taken off by the two Albs – into separate rooms, as Griot saw – and Kira said, ‘Another of those long boring evenings. Do tell us something interesting, Griot.’ Griot said, ‘I’m sorry, Kira. I have to leave in the morning early and I must talk to Shabis.’ ‘Then talk away.’ Griot looked for help to Shabis, who rose and said, ‘Come, we’ll go for a walk. It’s quite light still.’ ‘I want to walk too,’ said Kira. ‘No,’ said Shabis. ‘Stay where you are.’ ‘Oh, Shabis,’ cajoled Kira, but Shabis frowned. Griot saw that Kira had wanted to move into Mara’s place, still wanted to, but it had not happened, and that was the reason for her petulance and her complaints. The idea of Kira where Mara had been shocked Griot, and he stood looking at Kira with such dislike that she removed her attention from Shabis, gave it to Griot and said, ‘So, what’s the matter, Griot? You’ve got your way, haven’t you? It’s more than I ever do.’ And she actually seemed about to cry. This was such a new thing in Kira, this childishness, that Griot was again set back by it, and Shabis called to him, ‘Come on, Griot.’ The two men went out into the dusk, with the dogs. They stood well away from the house. Kira was in the doorway trying to overhear. Griot told how Dann had been ill since the news of Mara’s death; he explained why Dann had heard so late. He told as much as he had gathered of Dann’s adventures at the Bottom Sea and at last made himself say that Dann was mad, and he didn’t know what to do. ‘Let us go further,’ said Shabis, with a glance back at the looming purple shape that was Kira. They walked down a stony path while the noise of the Western Sea loudened, and stopped close together where spray came hurtling over a cliff, but the noise was not too bad. ‘He was very ill once before,’ said Shabis and told Griot of the events in the Towers at Chelops. ‘Yes, when he is rambling he talks about it.’ ‘Usually he never mentions it. Mara said he was afraid of thinking about it.’ ‘And now he is afraid of poppy.’ Griot told Shabis of Dann’s orders never to give him poppy. ‘Then that’s the main thing,’ said Shabis. ‘And I’ll ask Leta, she has medicines for everything. But meanwhile tell me about the Centre. What’s all this about a new army?’ Griot told Shabis his story, not boasting, but proud of what he had achieved, and he ended saying that Tundra’s cities should be invaded. Now was the right time. ‘You talk easily about invasions and killing, Griot.’ ‘I think Tundra will soon start invading us. The Centre is a rich prize. And the old people are dead. They want Dann, for his reputation.’ ‘Really, and what reputation is that?’ said Shabis, surprising Griot, who then saw the older man’s ironical smile. ‘But it seems to me there are two. One, General Dann – and he deserved that; when I promoted him so young I think I can say I knew what I was doing. But this other reputation, the wonder worker Prince Dann? That’s all just moonshine and talk.’ ‘It’s not Prince Dann, or prince anything, people talk about. But he does seem to have some kind of – authority that it’s hard to explain. And my spies tell me that all over Tundra they are waiting for him.’ ‘I see. I seem to have been here before. I spoke against the invasion of Shari. That is why I became the enemy of the other three generals. And I was right. Nothing was achieved except the usual tale of refugees and deaths. In my experience easy talk about wars and invasions means weakness, not strength.’ ‘It’s a question of need. The refugees keep coming and coming – I am sure you must see them here – and they have to be fed and clothed and looked after. I remember how you used to give us lectures and lessons, and I try to do the same, Shabis. We are all so crowded, there’s no room. And Tundra is mostly empty.’ ‘Everything is so unstable, can’t you see that? The wars along the road to the east – they show no signs of ending. On the contrary, new wars flare up … The great unknown quantity, Griot – it’s the masses of refugees. Are you going to control armies of displaced people with some talk about a wonder worker called General Dann? And down south, there is bad trouble in Charad, in my country. The three generals were killed in a coup and the army is wanting me back.’ Griot could see that Shabis, standing there so close, was talking to himself, though loudly, because of the sea noise; he was rehearsing thoughts that he went over when he was alone. ‘And yes, Griot, you are too polite to say it, but you’re thinking I am too old for generalling and war. Yes, I am, but I’m not too old to be a figurehead. I am General Shabis, who was against the three bad generals, and they are dead. So I am wanted back to unify Agre and protect them against the Hennes. But how can I leave, Griot? You must see …’ Griot saw. Shabis could not take the child with him on a long and dangerous journey south. And she couldn’t be left here with Kira, who wished her ill. ‘I have a wife in Agre,’ said Shabis. ‘She’s a good woman but she would not welcome Mara’s child. Why should she? She longed for her own child but – we weren’t lucky. If I arrived there with Mara’s – no, I can’t even think of it. And so – you do see, Griot?’ ‘You could come to the Centre, with the child,’ said Griot. ‘I feel I have responsibilities here, apart from Tamar. Daulis, I know, would go back to Bilma if there weren’t Leta to consider. And Leta knows it. If Leta returned to Bilma she would find herself back in the … did you know Leta was in the whorehouse there?’ ‘Yes. When Dann rambles he tells a good deal. But you forget, I was living here before and Leta is not exactly shy about her life as a whore.’ ‘You don’t understand. She’s so ashamed of it, and that’s why she has to talk.’ ‘If you came to the Centre, you and Dann together could lead us invading Tundra.’ Griot’s voice trembled, telling how this seemed to him the apotheosis of the best he could hope for – General Shabis and General Dann … ‘You and Dann,’ he said again. ‘Have you thought that Dann might not be so pleased to see me? He lost his sister to me – that’s how he sees it. Rather, how he feels it. He was always generous to me – to us – to me and Mara. But when I think of how he feels – well, I try not to, Griot.’ Griot was silent. The sea crashed and washed below them and stung them with spray. ‘So, you see, Griot, there’s a stop to any path I might want to take.’ Griot, who had been a child left to fend for himself, was thinking that the little girl, Tamar, was surely too small, too unimportant – was that it? – to stand in the way of General Shabis and his duty to heal his country. ‘Back to the house, Griot. I’m glad you came. Don’t imagine I’m not thinking about all this – it’s what I think about all the time.’ Kira met them on the veranda, and she was glittering with anger in the lamplight. ‘In a minute, Kira,’ said Shabis and the two men went past her. In the main room Leta and Daulis were playing dice. Donna was with the children. Shabis asked Leta to go with him. They left Kira with Griot. ‘So, what’s the big secret?’ said Kira. ‘Has Dann gone completely crazy at last?’ This was most unpleasantly acute. ‘I’m sure you would be told if he were,’ said Griot. Leta returned with packets of herbs, which she spread out and began instructing Griot. ‘These are all sedative herbs,’ said Kira. ‘We have people who are ill,’ said Griot, refusing to surrender Dann to Kira. ‘Well, tell Dann it is time he saw his child,’ said Kira. ‘Tell him to come and see me.’ ‘Yes, I will. And he would want to see his sister’s child too,’ said Griot. He was using a tone to Kira he never had when he was here before. He stood his ground while she sparked off anger, muttered something, turned and went out. ‘Never mind her,’ said Leta, her voice full of dislike. This must be a jolly company of people, Griot thought. He was glad he was not trapped here. He asked to sleep on the veranda, so he could slip off in the morning. He slept lightly. In the night he watched Kira come out and stand at the top of the steps, looking out. She only glanced at him, and then went out into the dark. Very early he woke and saw her a little way down a slope to where some sheds stood, talking to some people who he knew were newly arrived refugees. They must have come by the marsh roads, not seeing the Centre. The two dogs were with her; when they saw he was awake, they left her and came to wag their tails and lick his hands, and then went a little way with him. Before he turned a corner on to the road, he saw Leta on the veranda. Her hair glistened in the early light: it was like sunlight. Her skin was so white: he could never decide what he thought about Albs. They fascinated but they repelled him. That hair – how he wanted to touch it, to let the smooth slippery masses run through his fingers. But her skin … he thought it was like the white thick underbelly skin of a fish. Donna’s hair wasn’t fair, like Leta’s, but dark and fine, and where it was parted, or when a breeze blew, the skin showed dead white. Once, Griot knew, all of Yerrup had been filled with these Alb people, all with white fish skins. He didn’t like thinking about it. A lot of people said Albs were witches, the men too, but Griot did not take this seriously: he knew how easily people said others were witches, or had magical powers. And why should he complain? When his soldiers said Dann had magic in him, Griot merely smiled and let them think it. Before Griot had even reached the gates of the Centre he heard the commotion in Dann’s quarters: shouts, the snow dog’s barks, Dann’s voice. He ran, and burst into the room where Dann was standing on his bed, arms flailing, eyes and face wild. There was a sickly smell. Dann saw Griot and shouted, ‘Liar. You tricked me. You went to intrigue with Shabis against me.’ The two soldiers on guard, minding Dann, stood with their backs to a wall: they were exhausted and they were frightened. The snow dog sat near them, as if protecting them, and watched Dann, who jumped off the bed and began whirling around, so that his outflung hands just missed first one soldier’s face and then the other’s; he whirled so that his fingers flicked Griot’s cheek, then a foot went out as if to kick Ruff, but the animal sat there, unflinching. He let out a low growl of warning. ‘Sir,’ said Griot, ‘General … no, listen, Dann …’ ‘Dann,’ sneered Dann, still flailing about, ‘so it’s Dann, is it? Inferior ranks address their superiors like that, is that it?’ Now Griot had had time to see that on a low table was a greasy smeared dish and on that a lump of poppy which had been burning and was still smoking. Dann leaped back on the bed and stood, knees bent, hands on his thighs, glaring around. His dark pupils had white edges. He was shaking. ‘And there’s another thing,’ he shouted at Griot. ‘I’m going to burn down your precious Centre, full of rubbish, full of dead old rubbish, I’m going to make a fire big enough to scorch all of Tundra.’ He fell back on the bed, obviously to his own surprise, and lay staring up, breathing in fast sharp gasps. One of the soldiers said, in a low voice, which was dulled by fear, ‘Griot, sir, the General set fire to the Centre, but we stopped him.’ ‘Yes, I did,’ came the loud voice from the bed. ‘And I will again. What do we want with all this old rubbish? We should burn it and be finished.’ ‘General, sir,’ said Griot, ‘may I remind you that you asked me not to let you have poppy. It was an order, sir. And now I’m going to take it away.’ At this up leaped Dann and he jumped off the bed towards the poppy, and then changed his mind, to attack Griot, who stood there as if hypnotised. And he was: he was thinking that in the fearful strength of his seizure Dann could overmaster him easily and in a moment. The snow dog walked in a calm considered way to where the two men faced each other and took Dann’s right arm, lifted to strike, in his big jaws and held it. Dann whirled about. A knife had appeared in his other hand, but it was not clear if Dann meant it for Ruff or for Griot. The snow dog let himself move with Dann’s movement but did not let go. Griot said, ‘Sir, you ordered me to keep the poppy from you.’ ‘Yes, but that wasn’t me, it was The Other One.’ And now, hearing what he had said he stood transfixed, staring – listening? He was hearing … what? ‘The Other One,’ muttered Dann. Yes. Mara had said it, the other one, she had said it reminding him of what he was capable of, reminding him of how he had gambled her away. The Other One … and Dann. Two. Just where he was standing now, he and Mara had stood and he had heard her tell him, because of some folly he was about to commit, ‘You wouldn’t do it but the other one would.’ The Other One. Which one was he now? The snow dog let Dann’s arm fall from those great jaws and returned to where he had stationed himself, near the two bemused soldiers. ‘The Other One,’ Dann said. He whirled about, so that they all thought he might be beginning again with his flailing and his threatening, but instead he took up the dish with the smoking poppy on it and thrust it at Griot. ‘Take it. Don’t let me have it.’ Griot beckoned one of the soldiers, handed him the dish and said, ‘Get rid of it. Destroy it.’ The soldier went out with the dish. Dann watched this, eyes narrowed, his body quivering; he slackened and let himself fall on the bed. ‘Come here, Ruff,’ he said. The snow dog came, jumped up on the bed and Dann put his arms round him. He was sobbing, a dry painful weeping, without tears. ‘I am thirsty,’ he croaked. The remaining soldier brought him a mug of water. Dann drank it all, began to say, ‘More, I need more …’ and fell back, and was asleep, the snow dog’s head on his chest. Griot ordered the soldier to go and rest, and see to it that there were replacement guards. He needed to sleep, too. That scene with Dann – but he had seemed more like a demented impostor – had gone so fast Griot hadn’t understood what was happening. He needed to think about it. Afraid to go too far from Dann, he lay on the bed in the adjacent room and left the door open. The other one, Dann had said. He, Griot, needed to ask someone – Shabis? It was Mara he needed to talk to. If he could bring her back, even for a few moments, he would know exactly what to ask her. Through the open door Griot watched the two replacement guards enter from outside and stand by the wall. Ruff growled a soft warning, but let his great tail wag, and fall. He slept. Dann slept. Griot slept. And woke to silence. In the next room Dann had not moved, neither had the snow dog, and the two soldiers dozed, sitting with their backs to the wall. A peaceful silence. Griot withdrew, washed, changed, ate, inserting himself again into this life, in the Centre. He then took up his position at the table in the great hall. There he spent the hours after the midday meal, thinking, calculating supplies and seeing any soldier who wanted to see him. Usually he could be sure of a stream of supplicants, with their interpreters, since there might be a dozen languages Griot did not know in the course of an hour or two. Today there were none. The soldiers were confused. Worse, they were afraid. Everyone knew that their General whose absences, whose unpredictability, added to his prestige, had gone very mad and that he had tried to set fire to the Centre. They would not know how or what to ask Griot, if they did come to speak to him, which was every soldier’s right. Griot sat on at his table. They were in their huts in the camp, waiting. For Griot, for explanations. For Dann, most of all. If they didn’t know what to think, Griot didn’t either. His feeling for Dann had been not far off awe, something much higher than the respect for a superior. For days, before going to the Farm, he had been nursing that scarred body, with its weals around the waist, which could only be from the sharp claws of a slave’s punishment chain. Well, Griot had been a slave: they all feared that tight metal chain with its spikes more than any other punishment. He had seen Dann rave, from poppy, and if it hadn’t been for the snow dog Dann might easily have killed Griot. So what did he think now? One thought was the obvious one. He, Griot, had created the army out there, for it was that, if a small one. He, Griot, ran it, maintained it, fed it, planned for it. If Dann died, or finally went mad, or walked away again somewhere, Griot would be its ruler, and what did he think about that? There was one central thing here, not to be encompassed in an easy fact, or statement: Dann’s fame, or whatever the emanation from him could be called, had spread everywhere through the cities of Tundra. Griot had discovered this for himself. He had gone in disguise into Tundra, taking the dangerous way through the marshes, and had sat about in eating houses and bars, drinking for long tedious evenings in inns, gossiping in market places. Everyone knew that the old Mahondis were dead, but there were new young ones, and it wasn’t just ‘the Mahondis’ but one, the young General, Dann. Some said his name was Prince Shahmand, but where had all that come from? Not Griot! It was the old woman, spinning her webs, using her network of spies – which now was Griot’s network. But the name was General Dann, and that had not been the old woman’s. It was a strange and unsettling thing, listening to that talk. Dann had not been so very long at the Centre before he had gone to the Farm, had not been long there again before going on his adventure to the Bottom Sea. Yet that had been enough to set the talk running, to fire imaginations. He had a life in the thoughts of the peoples of Tundra. They expected that he would fill the Centre with its old power and that once again it would dominate all of Tundra. Tundra power was weakening fast and so they waited for the Good General, for Dann. What name could you put to that fame of his? It was an illusion, as Shabis had said. It was a flicker of nothing, like marsh gas, or the greenish light that runs along the tops of sea waves – Griot had seen that, in his time. It had no existence. Yet it was powerful. It was nothing. Yet people waited for General Dann. Griot had created an army, an efficient one, but Griot was nothing at all, compared with Dann, who possessed this – what? Griot sat pondering this, sitting quiet and long in the great hall, a small figure underneath the tall pillars and airy fluted ceilings that still held traces of long-ago colours, clear reds, blues, yellows, green like sea water. He did not much care about all that but supposed that old grandeur did connect somewhere with Dann’s glamour. Did it? But why should he care about Dann’s qualities, if he did not care now about Dann, who would have killed him? But he did. Griot’s not very long life, his hard and dangerous life, had not taught him love or tenderness, except for a sick horse he had tended in one of the places he had stopped – for a while – before having to run away again. He understood Dann’s feeling for the snow dog. But now Griot was thinking that if he had loved Dann, there was nothing left of what he had loved him for. But that word, love, it made him uncomfortable. Could the passionate admiration of a boy for an officer far above him be called love? He did not think so. Where was that handsome, kindly young officer – captain, then general? There was only the unreal thing, his ability to set fire to the expectations of people who had never even met him. Griot thought of that terribly scarred body, which he had nursed like – well, like the wounded horse whose life he had saved. He was really very unhappy. Where there should have been General Dann, a strong healthy man, there was a sick man who was at that moment sleeping off a bout of poppy. Then he saw coming from Dann’s apartment Ruff, the snow dog, and behind him, Dann, white-faced, frail, cautious of movement, but himself. Himself. Who? Well, he wasn’t the other one – whoever he was. Why was Griot so sure? He was. He was conscious that to say it was no answer to terrible questions – which he did not feel equipped to deal with. But he was equipped to say, ‘That’s Dann, there he is.’ Dann sat down opposite Griot, yawned and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m not mad now.’ (He could have said, ‘I am not him now.’) Then Dann said, and it wasn’t careless, or casual – no, he had been thinking he must say it, and mean it: ‘I am sorry, Griot.’ Did he remember he could have killed Griot if Ruff hadn’t stopped him? ‘First,’ he went on, in this considering way he was using, as if checking off things he had planned to say, ‘first, Griot, there is the question of your rank. I was stupid – what I said.’ (He didn’t say, ‘what he said.’) ‘You are responsible for everything. You’ve done it all. And yet the soldiers don’t know what to call you.’ Griot sat waiting, suffering because Dann was, looking at Dann who was not looking at him, and that was because his eyes were hurting, Griot could see: light from high up, where the many windows were, fell in bright rays. Dann moved his head back, out of the brilliance, and blinked at Griot. ‘If Shabis could make me a learner general – did you know that, Griot? I and others of Shabis’s – pets, we were learner generals. But they called us general.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ said Griot quietly, but hurt: he found it so hard to accept that he had made so small an impression on Dann at a time when Dann had been everything for him. ‘So, how about it, Griot? I suppose I am General Dann, if you say I am, but you should be a general too, General Griot.’ ‘I’d like to be captain,’ said Griot, remembering the handsome young captain Dann who was in his memory still as something to aim for. ‘Then we’ll have to be careful no one gets promoted above captain,’ said Dann. ‘We are making up this army from scratch, aren’t we, Griot? So we can say what goes. General Dann and Captain Griot. Why not?’ And he laughed gently, looking through the bright light at Griot with eyes that watered; he wanted Griot to laugh with him. There was something gentle and tentative about all this, and Griot found himself wanting to walk round the table, lift Dann up and carry him back to his bed. Dann was trembling. His hand shook. ‘I am going to address the soldiers,’ he said, and Griot heard another item on Dann’s mental list ticked off. ‘Yes, I think you should,’ said Griot. ‘They are pretty disturbed.’ ‘Yes. The sooner the better. And at some point we must talk about the Centre … it’s all right, I’m not going to burn it down. I’m not saying I don’t want to.’ He lifted his head and sniffed, as Ruff might have done – as Ruff did, too, because Dann did. Griot allowed the smell of the Centre, which he usually shut away from him, in his mind, to enter, and wrinkled up his nose, as Dann was doing. A dank grey smell, and now it had a hint of burning in it, too. ‘Dann, there is something I found out about the Centre and you’d be interested …’ Dann waved this away. ‘Call the soldiers,’ he said. Griot went out, looking back to see Dann sitting blinking there in the light, which was about to slide away and leave him in shadow. The snow dog put his head on Dann’s thighs and Dann stroked it. ‘Ruff,’ he said, and he said it passionately, ‘you’re my friend, Ruff. Yes, you’re my friend.’ And I am not, Griot said to himself. I am not. Soon a thousand soldiers stood at ease on the space called the parade ground, or the square, between the main Centre buildings and the camp of shed and huts. Too small a space, but there was nowhere for it to expand. On one side of the camp were the cliffs of the Middle Sea and on the other the marshes began. The camp could expand only one way, along the edge of the Middle Sea, and it was, and too fast. On the north side of the Centre its walls were sinking into wet. Between them and the cliffs were the roads needed to bring the crops and the animals from their pastures, and the fish catches from the sea. Dann stood at ease, wearing the old gown he slept in – lived in, these days. Beside him sat Ruff, his head as high as Dann’s chest. Opposite Ruff sat the phalanx of snow dogs, with their minders, one to a dog. The animals were very white and they glistened in the gloomy scene. Behind the snow dogs were the soldiers. They were of every kind and colour. The majority were stocky, strong, solid people, probably Thores, or of Thores stock, but there were many Kharabs, tall and thin, and mixes of people from all along the coasts, from the wars; they were still coming in every day. The presence of people from the River Towns, so far south, was evidenced by the ranks of shiny very black faces, and there was even a little platoon of Albs, with skin like Leta’s or modified shades of it. The hair was of all kinds. Not one of them had Leta’s pale hair, like light. All colours, all sizes, and hair long and black, like Dann’s, to the tight close curls of the River Towns, and the many shades of brown from the East. There were all kinds of clothes. Some still wore the rags they had arrived in. Griot simply could not get enough clothes for them, of any sort, let alone standard clothes that would make a uniform. Despairing, Griot had bought fleece cloth from Tundra and dyed it red, and every soldier, no matter what he wore under it, had over his or her shoulder a red woolly blanket, needed on most days of the year, chilly, cold, always damp. Without these red blankets they would have nothing to identify them. Throw them away and they would be a rabble. Dann stood there, silent, for a while, smiling, letting them have a good look at him. Then he said, ‘I am sure you know that I have been ill.’ He waited, watching those faces, which would show – what? Derisive smiles? Impatience? No, they all stood and waited, serious, attentive. ‘Yes, I have been very ill.’ He waited. ‘I was ill from the poppy.’ Now a different silence gripped the soldiers. A seabird speeding along the cliff edge cut the silence with its wings. It screamed and another answered from where it floated far out beyond the cliffs. ‘When I was young I was captured by a gang of dealers in poppy and ganja – I was forced to take poppy and I was very ill then. I have the scars of the poppy on me – as I think you must know.’ Silence; a deep and powerful attention. Dann had picked up a red fleece on his way out to the square and had held it in his hand, and now he shifted it into his arms and stood sheltering it, like a child: like something young that needed protecting. There was a breath of sympathy from the soldiers, a sigh. ‘So I know very well how poppy gets a grip on you. ‘It had a grip on me. ‘It still has a grip on me. ‘I do not believe that this will be the last time it makes me – ill.’ Between each quiet, and almost casual, statement Dann waited, and took his time looking over the faces. Not a sound. ‘Griot – where are you?’ Griot stepped out from the doorway that led to Dann’s room and came forward to stand in front of Dann, where he saluted and, at Dann’s gesture, stood beside him. ‘You all know Griot. This is Captain Griot. That is what you will call him. Now, I am speaking for Captain Griot and for myself, General Dann. If any one of you, any one wearing the red fleece, catches me with poppy, it will be your duty to arrest me and take me at once to Captain Griot – or anyone else who is in command. You will take no notice of anything I say or do when under the influence of poppy. This is my order. You will arrest me.’ He paused a long time here. Ruff, standing between Griot and Dann, looked up at Griot’s face and at Dann’s, and then barked softly. A ripple of laughter. ‘Yes, and Ruff says so too. And now for you. If any one of you is found with poppy, in the camp, let alone smoking it, you will be arrested and severely punished.’ Here a tension communicated itself from Griot to Dann, who said, ‘The degree of punishment has not yet been decided. It will be announced.’ A movement of unease through the soldiers. ‘You will remember, I am sure, that you chose to come here, to the Centre. No one forced you. No one stops you from leaving. But while you are here, you will obey orders. And now, look to Captain Griot for orders and for what you need. I am not well yet and I shall rest, though I am sure I will be well soon. Captain, dismiss them.’ Dann retired back to the great hall and Griot’s working table, where Griot joined him, with the snow dog. Dann sat carefully, disposing his so thinly covered bones among the folds of his Sahar robe, which had been Mara’s, though Griot did not know this. Griot waited and, when Dann said nothing, asked, ‘And how are you proposing to punish, sir?’ ‘I thought we could dismiss any soldier caught with poppy.’ ‘No, that is how I was punishing the looters from the Centre, and all that happens is that they became gangs of outlaws and thieves.’ ‘So, what else?’ ‘I have put offenders into a punishment hut on half-rations but, you see, some of these people have starved for weeks, and our half-rations and a warm hut are hardly a punishment.’ ‘Well, then?’ ‘When I was in the army in Venn, they branded offenders with marks denoting their offence.’ ‘No,’ said Dann at once, ‘no.’ His hand went to his waist where the scars were. ‘No,’ said Griot, ‘I agree. When I was in the army in Theope – that’s on the coast, and it’s a cruel place – they flogged offenders, in front of the whole army.’ ‘No, no flogging. I’ve seen it. No.’ ‘This is an army – General.’ ‘Yes, it is, and congratulations. And how are you going to enforce discipline?’ ‘Sir, in my view there is not much we can do. This is an army but it is a voluntary one. What we are depending on is …’ ‘Well, out with it.’ ‘It’s you – sir. No, I know you don’t like that, General, but it’s true. Everyone is waiting – for you. What we lack is space. You can see that. We are badly overcrowded now. There are parts of the Centre fit for occupation, but if we had the soldiers in it, they would be a rabble in no time.’ ‘Yes, you are right. And then?’ ‘And the food. You have no idea what a job it is, feeding everyone.’ ‘Then tell me.’ ‘We’ve got a road zigzagging down to the Bottom Sea and the fish comes up that. We have fishing villages all along the shores of the Bottom Sea now – well, for a good little distance. We have our farms on the slopes of the mountain. The animals are doing well. But there’s never enough of anything.’ ‘So, it’s Tundra. I get your message, Griot. So what are your spies saying?’ ‘There will be civil war. There’s already fighting in some places out on the eastern edges of Tundra.’ He saw the strain on Dann’s face. Dann was trembling. He seemed hardly able to keep his seat. ‘They want us to invade and keep order and – they want you, sir.’ ‘A Mahondi general?’ ‘I don’t think they remember that. To tell the truth it is hard to understand how they see it. You are a bit of a legend, sir.’ ‘What a prize, Griot. What a general. What a ruler – that’s what they want, I suppose.’ Griot’s eyes were going to overflow if he wasn’t careful. He could hardly bear to see Dann sit shaking there: he was actually putting his weight on the snow dog, for support. Griot could not stop thinking about the handsome young captain in Agre, or, for that matter, the healthy Dann who had returned from his wanderings so recently. And here was this sick unhappy man who looked as if he were seeing ghosts, or hearing them. ‘You’ll get better, Dann – sir.’ ‘Will I? I suppose I will. And then …’ Here there was a good long pause and Griot had no idea what Dann might say next. ‘Griot, do you ever think of – of the cities – the cities under the marshes? Did you know they were all copies of the cities that long ago – long, long ago – were all over Yerrup? That was before the Ice. They were built here on permafrost. That is, permanent frost, that would last for ever – that is how we think, you see, Griot, that the things we have will last. But they don’t last. The cities sank down into the water. All of us, we live up here and just down there are the old dead cities.’ Now he was making himself lean forward to hold Griot’s eyes, trying to make what he was saying reach Griot who, he was sure, was not taking it in. ‘Dann, sir, you’ve forgotten, I’ve had bad times too. And when you’re frightened or you’re hungry you have all kinds of bad thoughts. But there’s no point in that, is there? It doesn’t get you anywhere.’ ‘No point in starting again. Yes, Griot, exactly; no point. Over and over again, all the effort and the fighting and the hoping, but it ends in the Ice, or in the cities sinking down out of sight into the mud.’ Now Griot leaned across the table and took Dann’s hand. It was cold and it shook. ‘It’s the poppy, sir. It’s still in you. You should go to bed, have a rest, sleep it off.’ The snow dog did not like Griot touching Dann and he growled. Griot removed his hand. ‘We live in these ruins, Griot, these ruins, full of things we don’t know how to use.’ ‘We know how to make some of them. And there is something else I discovered while you were away. I’d like to talk to you about it when you wake up.’ ‘Rubbish, ancient rubbish, Griot. I had the right idea when I set fire to it. No, I won’t do it again, don’t worry.’ ‘There are things here you haven’t seen.’ ‘Mara and I explored the place.’ ‘There’s a hidden place. The old people didn’t know about it. They didn’t care about all that. All they cared about was you and Mara – well, that’s the past.’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘But the servants – the Centre had hereditary servants.’ ‘It would.’ ‘Yes. They knew the Centre and the hidden things. They never told the old people. Only the servants knew. And there are things …’ ‘More old rubbish.’ ‘No, wonders. You’ll see.’ Dann got up unsteadily, his weight on the snow dog who adapted himself to him. ‘And you haven’t heard what is going on at the Farm.’ ‘Do I want to hear it? Yes, of course I have to hear it.’ He stood by the table, balancing himself there with one hand, but his weight was on Ruff’s back. He listened. ‘But my child isn’t in danger – Rhea, you say? Because it is Kira’s.’ ‘It is Mara’s child who is in danger. But Leta and Donna – they never let Tamar out of their sight.’ ‘I was going to suggest you ask Leta to come. She has all that knowledge of medicines.’ Griot knew that there were people in the camp with this knowledge, or some, but he did not want to discourage Dann’s interest, so he said, ‘I’ll send for Leta. Donna can keep watch on Mara’s child.’ Dann said, ‘If Shabis goes back to Agre, the child could go with him.’ Griot repeated what Shabis had said. ‘Then … that’s it,’ said Dann, shaking off these problems, because they were too much for him – as Griot could see. Dann walked to his quarters, with that cautious steadiness people use when they are afraid of falling. The snow dog went with him. Griot sat on in the empty hall. The airy apertures of its upper parts showed a light snow whirling about the sky. Snow: and that mass of people out there he was responsible for might never have seen it. Against extreme cold all they had was fleecy red blankets. Soon they would be streaming into the hall to complain: and so it was, in they came. How were they to make fires when there was no firewood, and reeds burned so fast they were ash before they gave out warmth? Well, it made a change from the problem of too many people in too small a space. He was expecting Dann to rejoin him: it was his need that made him think so. So much weight on him, Griot, so many difficulties. But Dann did not emerge and when Griot went to see, he was lying as still as a stunned fish and seemed hardly to breathe. The guards were dozing, the snow dog lying stretched out asleep beside him. It occurred to Griot that he must postpone his expectations of Dann. Perhaps next day, or the next … Griot had plenty to think about. He was rehearsing how he would report his discoveries. When Dann had gone on his walk to the east, Griot had decided to explore the Centre’s resources. This plan lasted a day or two. Griot had had no idea of the vastness of the place: it would take too long. It was immediately obvious that some parts had been so thoroughly plundered there was nothing to hope for from them. Halls so long and wide you could hardly see their edges, were empty: these had held guns, weapons, of the kind to be seen in armies in every part of Ifrik. What had been left were samples of what had gone. In a space that could have housed an army would be displayed a single sword of workmanship which no one could match now: a musket; a bow made of unknown wood; guns Griot had seen in use, that fired iron balls; but of course many of these had gone too. Empty halls: and the need for space. But these vast spaces had leaking roofs and in some places puddles that were not from the roof: excuse enough not to put them into use. The sheds and huts the soldiers lived in were drier and warmer than these frigid leaking halls. Many of the fugitives and outcasts that had found hiding places in the Centre had sneaked themselves places in the soldiers’ camp and Griot pretended ignorance. Other halls, as vast, were full of artefacts whose use was now known, and stood in a crammed order that had not been touched for – but Griot did not enjoy talk of thousands of years. The places that interested him had machines that he believed might be copied and used now, for agriculture, or boats of intriguing designs. He put some soldiers on to examine all these, and found – not for the first time – what a treasure of expertise and skills were in that crowd of runaways out there, now his army. He left them to it, demanding that they should memorise what they had found, well enough to describe it all to Dann. He had become absorbed in an unexpected direction: the water that was welling up, so it seemed, from deep under the Centre. He asked for volunteers to dig, who had some knowledge of wells, or shafts, and within a few days they had come to say they had found layers of wood. They had stood all around a pit and looked down at beams laid in a cross-hatch, on which had been built foundations of stone. First of all, the wood. There were no big trees for many days’ walking in any direction. On the mountain were light trees, useless for building. These beams would have been heavy, even before they were soaked. Wood. Anywhere they dug, and not too deep down, were beams, and no one, none of these people from so many different countries, had seen trees that could have provided this wood. In one spot, the highest place in the Centre, Griot put the soldiers to dig further and they came on layers of wood and then more, deeper still. Once there had been forests here. Probably if you dug deeply enough into the marshes there would be trees lying pickled in that sour water. And then there was the stone. The Centre, or parts of it, was built of stone. Other parts were of bricks made of mud and reeds. Layers of time here: Griot knew that this interested Dann and so he stored up the information that was being brought to him by the soldiers. So much. All were interested, in their various ways, and some knowledgeable. Griot, who had never had a day’s schooling until he reached Agre and Shabis’s lectures for the troops, listened while his soldiers talked of things far above his head. Griot did not pretend to knowledge he did not have and was eager to listen – for Dann, who would soon return and be ready to hear all this. Griot remembered Mara, and how she talked of the Centre and of its stores of information, its lessons, and that is why he was sure about Dann. But Dann did not return. All the wells and pits – and this was true anywhere in the Centre – held water. The northern edges of the Centre were sinking into wet. The truth was, and there was no evading it, the whole enormous expanse of the Centre was undermined with water, and it was not far down, either. And then something else happened, and its importance was brought to Griot by some of his soldiers, who had been scribes and teachers in their native lands. There were, and there were bound to be, tales of ghosts: so many peoples had lived here, builders in wood from long, long ago, builders in stone, generations upon generations, and of course ghosts walked the Centre, and people inclined that way had seen them. And there were tales, that Griot took as little notice of as he did of the ghosts, of a secret place in the Centre so well hidden no one could find it without a guide. It was people from far away in the east who took this kind of thing seriously: they had heard it all as part of their tales of the Centre, which had been known everywhere, because of its fame and its influence. Griot listened to soldiers whom he had to respect, for their education, talking about sand libraries, and sand records. He had heard Mara use these words, not knowing what they meant. Well, then, so there was this hidden place, but it was hidden, wasn’t it? And then, one of the refugees, newly arrived, said that he had been told as part of the stories he was brought up with, that the secrets of the Centre were known by its servants. The old princess, Felissa, was alive, but demented, and when Griot took a Mahondi speaker to visit her she screeched at both of them, not to tell lies. If there were secrets in the Centre she would have known them. Two servants had looked after Felissa. One, the old man, had died, but the old woman was sharp and alert and suspicious. Griot and his Mahondi interpreter said that they knew there was a secret place and that she, as an hereditary servitor of the old couple, must know about it. She said it was all lies. Griot cut this by saying that Dann had instructed him to get the secret, and emphasised his command by standing over her with a long deadly knife – he had found it rusting in one of the museums and had had it sharpened. The old servant might have been as near death as made no difference, but she was afraid for her life, and agreed to show Griot the way. At first she wriggled and evaded and said she had forgotten, and that anyway she believed the place had fallen in, and there was a curse on anyone who told the secret, but at last the fact that she was going to tell the truth showed in her terror: she believed in this curse, and wept and whined as she led the way. The Centre could be viewed perhaps as a pot being shaped on a wheel, its shape changing, then changing again. Long ago – but the phrase meant a stretch of time shorter than the great age of the Centre – someone – who? – had ordered builders – who? – to make a place hard to find. Walls curved and evaded, disappeared as other walls intervened, and no wall was made of the same substance as its neighbour. Inside formidable weights of stone were long slim bricks made of clay and reed, that became stone again, and a wall had patterns on it you could memorise, but in a moment the patterns had changed, and slid into other messages, and, it seemed, other languages. The walls were like a magician’s tricks: designed to hold your attention while they did something else. No matter how carefully the invader approached a place, which he had been inveigled into thinking must be the right one, somehow he was deflected and found himself where he had started. Griot had taken just one soldier with him, a man from the east, and both followed the weeping and sniffling old woman, never taking their eyes off her, so easy was it to believe she shared the deceiving properties of the walls, that slid, and slipped away, and misled. That clever old builder, or school of builders, knew how to make fools of intruders. Though Griot was holding plans of where he had been in his mind, there was a moment when he knew he and his soldier were lost: if the old woman chose to leave them here, they might not be found again. They were deep under masses of stone. Griot stopped, stopped the old woman, made her retreat with him until he recognised a mark he had made on a stone, then advanced again, with her in front, the interpreter sweating and afraid. And now, this time, there was a place where walls slid past each other so cunningly you could hardly see a gap, because it was concealed by an outjut of old brick, but Griot and his companion did slide in, watching how the old woman had to bend and slide, and then at last he began to see what was hidden. But he did not understand anything. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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