Stone Spring Part 36

65.

The Sixteenth Year After the Great Sea: Summer Solstice.

'Then it's agreed,' said Novu to the elders of the Bone People. Sitting on the dusty deck of the raft, in the shade of a cloth canopy, he showed them the basket in front of him. 'You get forty nodules of the best Etxelur flint. In return, you send forty of your strongest young people to labour on our d.y.k.es next year.' He spoke fast, fluent traders' tongue, and he smiled, keen to close the deal.

Ana sat beside him, raised above the rest on a heap of skins, themselves valuable commodities. 'They should be healthy, mind,' Ana warned. 'The people you send. Good workers. No ill, no lame, n.o.body too young or too old . . .'

Dolphin, watching, thought that if Novu's face was open and trustworthy, a natural trader's, Ana's face, in the shade of the awning, was stern, hard to read.

The leaders of the Bone People, in a line before Novu, Ana and Jurgi, stared back. They were greedy for the flint; they could barely keep their eyes off the creamy, pale brown stone. Yet they were wary of the transaction Novu was trying to conduct.

It got even worse when Novu produced his counting tokens, little clay figurines with circles on their bellies.

Dolphin was sitting with Kirike and others of Etxelur's senior families on this borrowed raft in the background of the talks. They had no real part to play in these discussions. They were just here to add some weight to the Etxelur party. It was midsummer day, and they were in the estuary of the World River. Even in the canopy's shade it was intensely hot and humid, out here on the breast of the river. Midges hummed in the air. Occasionally, as a wave rolled down the languid water, the floor lifted and the wooden structure groaned like a great, relaxed sigh.

The Bone People elders were all men, for that was the way of these people from far inland, far up the river valley. They went naked, with their p.e.n.i.ses painted bright red with ochre, and each man wore a cap made of the upper skull of an honoured ancestor, and had a finger-bone from another grandparent shoved through the fleshy part of his nose. Their priest was just a boy, aged about fourteen. He had a whole tower of skulls on his head, threaded together through holes drilled in their crowns. He looked baffled, still a child, out of place in this meeting of adults.

Dolphin, distracted, saw a dragonfly that had somehow got under the awning, flitting about, confused. One of the Bone People s.n.a.t.c.hed it neatly out of the air in his fist, inspected it, then crushed it and popped it into his mouth.

Kirike plucked her elbow. 'I'm bored,' he whispered.

'Me too . . .'

'There's some old man over there watching us.'

Dolphin peered past the Bone People into the gloom, and she saw a man in heavy furs, dark, strong-looking, with scars striped across his forehead, like a Pretani. He was maybe thirty. There were a few people from other groups here, though the meeting was dominated by Etxelur folk and Bone People. When he saw Dolphin looking at him the stranger smiled; she looked away.

Kirike said, 'Let's get out of here.'

'Wait until they're not watching.'

Kirike was restless, but sat still, as Novu continued his patient setting out of the counting tokens.

The Bone People were intrigued by the trading, but they were disturbed too, faintly troubled. And well might they be, for so were many of the Etxelur folk. Too many traditions were being defied. All Dolphin's life the midsummer Giving, presided over by Ana, had been the most significant event of the year, as well as the most fun. People came to it from all across Northland. Some trade had always gone on - indeed traders like the one who had brought Novu himself to Etxelur could travel all the way across the Continent to such fairs, carrying their precious bits of iron and gold and obsidian and carved bone. But the point of the event wasn't the trade; the point was the Giving, the sharing.

That was how it used to be, anyhow.

The trouble was, Etxelur's huge projects, the d.y.k.es and drainage schemes, were always hungry for labour. But people still had to spend most of their time gathering food and building houses and making clothes and chasing children - the business of staying alive. And in Etxelur, it had soon become apparent, there just weren't enough people to fulfil Novu's grand schemes.

So Etxelur had started to buy labour from its neighbours.

Its treasure was the flint mined from Flint Island, and from the lode freshly exposed in the Bay Land. A rough exchange had soon been established: one nodule of high-quality flint in return for the labour of one healthy youngster for a summer. Many of these transactions were conducted at the Givings, and gradually the nature of the ceremony had changed, as Novu and the priest, watched over by a hawk-eyed Ana, spent much of their time conducting elaborate negotiations.

And now, this year, Ana had decreed a new departure. It was a year since Heni's death, and Qili's journey all the way from the estuary last year had given her the idea. This year, Etxelur's Giving wouldn't even be held in Etxelur at all. Instead, much of the population had made the long walk along the north coast of Northland to the World River estuary, and here Ana had built her Giving platform and set up a dreamers' house and organised the games, and Novu set out his trade goods. For, Ana argued, the estuary was the richest single site in all of Northland - and rich with people whose labour she could buy.

The heart had gone out of the Giving, complained old folk like Arga. It was as if the rebuilding of Etxelur had become a madness that was eating all their lives, and turning them away from the wisdom of the mothers. Some had gone to the priest, asking him to speak to Ana, but Jurgi had always been an ally of Ana. Ana and her core team didn't seem to care.

And so here they were, on midsummer day, far from home, doing business.

Novu's tokens, made of soft clay, were crudely shaped into human figures, each with a shapeless blob for a head, and limbs divided from the body by grooves. And each had a pattern of circles and bars inscribed into its belly.

Novu, as he always did, went through the meaning of the tokens to make sure the Bone People elders understood. 'This man has a single circle on his belly. That means one worker, for one summer.' He held up a finger. 'This little man has two circles, that's two workers. Three, four, five. Now look.' The next figure had a radial bar cutting to the centre of one small circle. 'The bar stands for five, for one hand.' He held up his open right hand to demonstrate. 'And the circle is one more. Six.' He held up his left forefinger. 'And this next one, a bar with two circles, means seven. And eight, and nine . . .' This system was continued up to the most complex inscription, of four bars and five circles, which stood for twenty-five.

The boy-priest picked up one of the little men. His skull-tower cap wobbled. The boy made the clay man walk up and down on his stumpy legs, humming a kind of tune. Novu waited patiently until the boy had finished playing, and restored the token to its place in the row before him.

Despite her restlessness to be away, Dolphin always enjoyed watching Novu go through this strange procedure, the cleverness of the little tokens. It had come about because of too many disputes about who had agreed to what, how many nodules had been promised for how many young workers or sacks of lime or boats laden with fish - disputes that were either the product of bad faith, or of deals done in the dreamers' house where n.o.body could remember whether they'd agreed to anything at all. One or two such lapses you could live with, but the building of Etxelur required a lot of planning, and a better way was needed.

Using tokens to record a deal was an idea Novu remembered from his home in Jericho, and what he had heard of practices among neighbouring peoples. He and Jurgi had worked out this system between them, basing it on the ancient concentric-circles symbol of Etxelur. Thus, as Novu produced two tokens to record the deal for forty workers - one little man with a four-bar, five-ring 'twenty-five' symbol, and another with a two-bar, five-ring 'fifteen' - he was giving the Bone People a reminder not just of the deal but of the spirit of Etxelur itself.

'Look, I will keep copies of the same tokens myself.' He held them up. 'Now we mark them so we know they record the truth.' He spat on his thumb, and pressed it into the soft clay of the heads of each of the four tokens, depressing the right side. Then he gave the tokens to one of the elders who, with prompting from Novu, did the same, pressing his thumb down on the left side of each shapeless face.

When this was done, the elder held up the little men he had been given, curious and, Dolphin thought, afraid, as if it was a new kind of magic. So he should be, she sometimes thought. The tokens were just bits of clay, yet they remembered conversations and deals more reliably than any human memory. What was that if not magic?

Ana and the others relaxed a little before moving on to their next business, which was a deal for a load of dried, salted eel. Ana drank juice from a sack, and spoke to the priest. Some of the Bone People got up and stretched their stiff legs, pacing on the raft's wooden floor.

Dolphin touched Kirike's shoulder. 'Now's our chance.'

He grinned and nodded. 'Just keep your head down.'

So they crawled away from the murmuring adults, making for the open side of the awning, and emerged into bright sunlight. Dazzled, Dolphin had to s.h.i.+eld her eyes and look around to orient herself. The gangway to the next raft was a bridge of stout logs bound up with rope and lashed in place.

She grabbed Kirike's hand, and they skipped away, laughing.

66.

Dolphin and Kirike felt welcome here on the World River. They were allowed to walk where they liked, stepping from raft to raft, and people smiled as they pa.s.sed, and children ran after them. They were even offered bits of food. The Etxelur Giving was still a time of generosity and friends.h.i.+p. Meanwhile the contests were continuing, as spears were thrown and hapless target animals run through, and races were fought out on land and in the river.

The rafts were too many to count, tethered to each other and to the western bank of the river. Far bigger than mere boats, or the petty platforms Etxelur folk built in the marshes to go eel-hunting, the rafts were stout structures of planks strapped to huge stripped tree trunks. Some of them were very old, as you could see by the weathering of the planks and the support beams. And people lived here, in houses of wooden frames and brush and skin set up on the back of the rafts. Fires burned, built on stone hearths, fires burning on the river.

The river itself was so wide here that you couldn't see its eastern bank - it was a river with a horizon, like an ocean. Further downstream the river spread out into a tremendous delta, its water running between huge marshy islands where even more crowds of people lived.

This was why this place was such a valuable resource for Ana and Novu, why they had come here. All these people, all these communities stretching inland as far as anybody had travelled, all connected to each other by the river - and all available as a source of labour to be mined like Etxelur's own flint lode.

And yet even here there were signs of the long, slow battle being waged between sea and land. The river folk spoke of islands far out in the delta once occupied by their grandparents and now abandoned, drowned by the rising ocean. And in patches along the forest-clad bank, even after sixteen years, you could still see heaps of the pale salty sea-bottom mud that had been hurled far inland by the mindless energies of the Great Sea - the G.o.ds' Shout.

They arrived at a raft where cages of wicker, weighted with stones, were suspended over the raft's side, just below the surface of the water. Inside each cage was a body. Bone showed through fish-chewed flesh, pale in the sunlight that dappled through the water. Even when they died, the people of the river were dominated by its tremendous presence; whereas in Etxelur you were laid out to be cleansed by sky, here it was left to the sharp teeth of the waters to strip your bones.

'I'll tell you what I heard today,' Kirike said. 'There are people here who spend their whole lives on the rafts - they never set foot on the dry land, not once in their lives.'

'I heard that too,' came a voice.

It was the dark man they had glimpsed watching them during Ana's meeting. He walked confidently across a gangway, carrying a bulky pack. Dolphin saw that Qili, Heni's grandson, was following him, looking faintly embarra.s.sed. The stranger was smiling. Dolphin didn't smile back.

The man kept talking as he approached, in a fluent, lightly accented Etxelur tongue. 'In fact, to be a priest you have to be one of the water-dwellers, you can never be sullied by contact with the ground, for they believe that all their G.o.ds live in the river and that the land is dead. There have been a few scandals in the past when some roguish priest was found to be slipping ash.o.r.e for his own purposes - you know what those fellows are like! And they had a crisis after the Great Sea when all their rafts got smashed, and those who survived had to clamber out on the sh.o.r.e.'

Kirike was interested. 'Ah. And that's why their priest back there is only fourteen or so.'

'Yes. The very first boy born safely on the rafts after the Great Sea, and he immediately got that tower of skulls stuck on his unfortunate head. This is a place where a single footprint in the mud can stop you being as a priest! But I suppose we all must look strange, from the outside.'

'And you look like a Pretani,' Dolphin said. 'Yet you speak the Etxelur tongue like a native.'

He just laughed. Tall, solid, heavy, the muscles prominent on his bare arms and legs, his face all but concealed by a thick black beard and two prominent kill scars, he looked out of place among the paler, more delicate river folk. 'Well, not quite a native, though you're kind to say so. But which of us is native anyhow? I know about you, Dolphin Gift, whose every drop of blood, like your mother's, comes from across the western ocean. I've travelled all over Albia and Northland and even into Gaira, and I never heard of anybody like that. What an extraordinary thing.' He turned to Kirike with interest. 'And you, Kirike. Black hair, solid build. Look at us, we're like brothers! I'm told you're half Pretani, and it shows.'

Kirike frowned. 'How do you know so much about us?'

He shrugged. 'Here we are at the mouth of the World River, yet everything revolves around faraway Etxelur. Everybody knows you, the names of Ana and her closest people. But you don't know my name - I apologise. I am Hollow.' He held out his two hands in the Pretani way of greeting.

Dolphin folded her arms and turned to Qili. 'Who is this character?'

Qili was clearly embarra.s.sed. 'He came to the estuary and found me,' he said in his halting Etxelur tongue. 'That's all I know. He knew I went to Etxelur last year, and he asked questions about you-'

'I only asked Qili to introduce us,' Hollow said. 'No harm done, surely.'

'You were watching us,' Dolphin said accusingly. 'You followed us here.'

Kirike protested, 'Dolphin-'

'Everybody knows that whenever Pretani are around there's trouble.'

'That may have been true in the past. But must the bad feeling last for ever?' He glanced at Kirike. 'I'm not here for trouble. I'm here to trade. Pretani folk always came to Etxelur Givings, in the old days, and Etxelur folk came on our wildwood hunts.'

'Those days are gone,' Dolphin snapped.

Kirike, more circ.u.mspect, asked, 'So what do you have to trade?'

'Ah. I thought you would never ask.' Hollow slipped off his pack, crouched down and unfolded a parcel of skin to expose a straight-edged block of stone: yellow-brown, carefully worked. Hollow stroked its surface. 'Good Pretani sandstone. See how finely grained it is? Easily worked.' He rapped it with his knuckle. 'Yet heavy and hard-wearing. Look, you don't have to know anything about stone to see its quality. If you have the best flints in the world in Etxelur, we Pretani surely have the best stone. If we can make a trade the bulk of it will be brought to Etxelur by boat, down the rivers and along the coast-'

Dolphin shook her head. 'Why would we want stone?'

'For your walls. Your d.y.k.es, your channels cut in the ground. Ask your genius from the east - Novu. Ask him about Jericho, where they face their great walls with stone, not bricks or mud. When he sees this stone he will hunger for it, believe me.'

'So why are you showing us?'

He stood up. 'Because it's as you said. There is bad blood between Etxelur folk and Pretani. Those who make the decisions in Etxelur, especially Ana herself, won't have anything to do with Pretani.'

'So that's it,' Dolphin said. 'Well, I won't help you get to Ana. As far as I'm concerned you can shove this stupid stone up your hairy Pretani a.r.s.e.'

He was unperturbed. 'That's disappointing.' He looked at Kirike again. 'I did know your father. It would be good to speak of him.'

Kirike blushed. To Dolphin's disgust, she saw that this blatant appeal to blood ties, from a man who looked so much like him, was swaying Kirike, who had grown up knowing neither of his parents. Kirike said to Dolphin, 'He's right about Novu. He often talks about stone buildings in Jericho. And the bad blood between Etxelur and Pretani can't last for ever. I can't see what harm it would do, Dolphin. Just to get Ana and Novu to look.'

Dolphin glared at him. 'Are you mad? Pretani aren't traders. They are killers who take what they want. You - Hollow - you've come here, you've learned our language, you've found out our names - all for a few boatloads of stone? What is it you really want?'

His vaguely good-humoured expression didn't falter, though she thought there was a greater lividity to the kill scars on his forehead. He murmured, too softly for the others to hear, 'Even if there was some grand scheme, I wouldn't tell you about it, would I? Remember, girl - you're an outsider. Foreign blood, like your mother.' He bent to pick up his stone block. 'Kirike - maybe we could talk about when I could meet Ana?'

Dolphin stormed away, crossing the rafts, making for the dry land. She didn't bother to check if Kirike was following her.

Qili hurried after her. 'I'm sorry. He seemed harmless enough - and anyhow I couldn't get rid of him. I didn't mean to cause any trouble . . .'

But Dolphin was in no mood to listen.

67.

'What do you mean, we should be having more children?' Arga was indignant, almost shouting. 'Since when did you become a little mother, Ana?'

'Maybe we should calm down,' said Jurgi, glancing uneasily at the door flap of the stuffy raftborne house.

Ana just glared at Arga, apparently unmoved by her outburst.

It was dark in this house despite the brightness of the day, and they had lit some of the whale oil lamps they had brought from Etxelur; their smoky glow underlit Ana's face, making her look even older than she was, severe.

It was the day before the Etxelur water council. This was another invention of Ana's, a meeting she held every quarter around the time of the equinoxes and solstices, as a way of ensuring all the complicated activities in Etxelur were fitting together properly. They might have come all the way to the World River estuary but Ana wasn't going to let the chance of a council go by. And as she customarily did, Ana had summoned Jurgi, Novu, Ice Dreamer and Arga in advance of the council to see if they could guess the concerns that might be brought up, and to practise their answers. They'd all done this before, and the arguments were typical.

But Jurgi was far from comfortable. They were guests in a house loaned them by estuary folk, on a raft that rode the body of the World River. This wasn't Ana's house, from which people kept a respectful distance; anybody might be listening to their arguments. He said now, 'Let's keep our voices down at least.'

Novu was sweating heavily, his face slick, irritable. 'Maybe we should just go and sit out in the open and have done with it. Anything's better than this stuffiness.'

Ana grunted unsympathetically. 'I thought you and the priest enjoyed making each other sweat in the dark.'

Novu snapped back, 'And I am getting sick of the way you speak to us.'

Ice Dreamer smiled. 'I suspect she's just jealous of the consolation you two have found together. She is alone, more alone than any of the rest of us.'

'And you're alone too,' Ana shot back, 'since my father spoiled your plan to crawl into his bed by getting himself killed.'

'Shut up,' Arga said. 'Shut up. I can't stand your bickering.' She glared at them, one after another. 'Didn't you hear what Ana just said? She wants us to have more babies. Jurgi, you're still the priest. Can't you tell her why that's so wrong?'

'Yes, tell me, Jurgi.'

He bit back a sharp response. 'Arga has a point. It may be different in Jericho. But all across Northland, and even in Albia and Gaira, I never heard of any people who didn't s.p.a.ce out their children.'