Stone Spring Part 40

And one of the worker types followed them. A slim man, wearing worn, dusty skins, he looked uncomfortable, his face oddly grey, slack, as if he wasn't quite alive. He was young, however, younger than Arga herself, she guessed.

The quarry was extraordinary. It was a patch of high open moorland that had been flayed of its turf and soil and peat, stripped down to the rocky bone. You could see where whole chunks of sandstone had been prised out of the ground. And all across this strange dug-up landscape, and even in deep pits cut into the ground, people worked, a few men, more women, many children. Coated in dust the same yellow-brown colour as the rock, some splashed with vivid blood from small wounds, they all looked the same: skinny and silent. But none of them were the dark, heavy-set Pretani; you could see that at a glance.

And on the sky-burial platforms that lined the bank of the nearby river, bodies had been heaped up. Most of them were children. Beyond the platforms the endless green of the oak forest rolled away.

The whole place made Arga deeply uncomfortable. Novu, short, stocky, his dark eyes gleaming, seemed fascinated.

It had been cruel of Ana, but typical of her, to send Novu away from Etxelur on this expedition to Pretani so soon after she had forced him to give up his lover Jurgi. It was one of her habits to distract possible enemies, just by getting them out of the way for a while. Arga was no enemy to Ana; she imagined she had been sent with Novu simply because Ana needed someone else from her inner circle to go with him.

But if it had been up to Arga they wouldn't be involved with the Pretani at all, no matter how good their stone was. And they certainly wouldn't be considering getting tied even more closely to them, as Hollow said he had brought them here to suggest.

Hollow, as they walked, was showing Novu the tools the slaves used to dig out their rock. 'Picks and shovels of antler, as you see. Red deer, and only the strongest, healthiest young males. This itself is brought to us by a web of trade . . .' His Etxelur tongue was smooth and fluent. He noticed Arga looking at the burial platform. 'People die here, as they do everywhere,' he said gently. 'Especially the children. At least these slaves die knowing they have achieved something with their lives - contributing to the building of Etxelur.'

Novu said, 'So tell me how you organise these people.'

Hollow gestured. 'You can see the basics. We split them half and half, roughly. The less useful half works to feed the more useful half that labours in the quarry. We use a mix of adults and children in the pits, more men than women, actually, for we need the brute strength of the bucks. And the cubs are useful for getting into the narrow s.p.a.ces when we're first opening up the seams.' He made a wriggling gesture with his hands. 'In they squirm, like your Great Eel herself, True!' The man did not react. 'We change them over every so often to let minor wounds heal, that kind of thing.

'We let them sleep down in the caves because that way you need less houses on the surface. But that does have its disadvantages. We had a collapse the other night, that's why there are so many bodies on the slaves' platforms. They built them themselves. You understand we Pretani hang our dead in the trees . . .'

Slaves. Before coming on this trip Arga had only seen the stone arrive with its Pretani handlers on the boats off the sh.o.r.e of Etxelur. She had never thought about where it came from, who must be digging it up. She looked at the silent man walking with them. 'Who are these people?'

'They call themselves the People of the Great Eel. But there are no eels here,' Hollow said with a grin. 'Step back now, True.' He said it softly, but it was enough to make True drop back hastily and lower his head.

Novu said, 'There are some slaves in Jericho, more elsewhere. It all makes sense, Arga.' He gestured at the quarry. 'Look how much gets done!'

'And that,' Hollow said easily, 'is what I want to talk to you about.' He led them on, walking slowly around the site. 'I visit Etxelur often - you know that. I admire your great works, the d.y.k.es, the reservoirs. But the work goes so slowly! I know how difficult that is for you, Novu, for so much of it is your vision. And I know how anxious Ana is becoming, as her years slip away like grains of sand.'

'It's true, it's true.'

Arga was disturbed how much this man knew about them. He wasn't like most Pretani, who were so obsessed with their own blood-drenched honour rituals they barely noticed other people at all. Hollow knew their hungers and their fears, as a hunter knew the habits of a stalked deer.

'And,' Hollow said, 'I think, Novu, you are starting to see the solution. Just look around.'

'Yes,' Novu said, intent. 'Not the quarry - you mean the people.'

'Exactly. Imagine if you owned people as we own these Eel folk. Imagine how quickly the work would progress. No more arguments about who does what and when. No more relying on neighbours, their loyalty secured by the flimsy bonds of an annual Giving. With workers like this you could do what you liked, as fast as you liked - or as fast as your workers were capable of, and that would be for you to determine, not them. It's not just stone I'm offering you now, Novu - it's people. And through people all your other problems will be solved.'

'What people?' Arga snapped. 'These? If we take away your Eel folk, who will dig the stone for you?'

'Oh, we wouldn't give you this lot. We've trained them up for this work, and half of them are worn out anyhow. No, we'd round up fresh meat. Our world-forest is full of it. We'd hand them over broken in spirit but healthy in body.'

Novu frowned. 'We'd have to discuss terms.'

'Of course.'

'But you'll do the deal, won't you?' Arga said. Since he had lost Jurgi, Novu had become even more obsessive about pursuing his great projects - as perhaps Ana, cunning, had intended all along. She hissed, 'But we don't know what the Pretani really want. How much flint can they need?'

But Novu did not respond, and Hollow led him away, around one of the pits. Hollow was gesturing, describing more aspects of the work. None of the toiling Eel folk looked up.

74.

The Seventeenth Year After the Great Sea: Summer Solstice.

'I'm pregnant,' Ana said.

Her voice was so soft that Arga wasn't sure she had heard correctly. She leaned forward.

They were sitting in a circle around the hearth in Ana's house, their faces lit by the fire's dull glow, Jurgi, Novu, Arga, Ice Dreamer, and two outsiders, Knuckle of the snailheads and Qili of the World River people. As was her wont, Ana sat above the rest on a heap of skins. Beside the fire, a treat for the visitors, sh.e.l.lfish had been set out on the ground, covered by a kindling of sticks and dry marram gra.s.s. The kindling was burning and the sh.e.l.lfish were cooking; as the sh.e.l.ls opened, spilling their juices, there were crackling sounds and delicious scents.

Ana smiled when she saw Arga's expression. 'You heard right. I'm pregnant.' She reached out and touched the hand of the priest who sat beside her. Jurgi looked faintly embarra.s.sed. 'I'm going to announce it to everyone at the Giving in a few days' time. But you are as close to me as anybody, and I wanted you to know first.'

The Giver had never looked more human, Arga thought. Her hair was as severely cropped as ever, and she wore her tunic tight around her body and pinned at the neck. Ana would always be a serious, closed-in woman, like a house with its door flap sewn shut. But tonight she looked slightly flushed, and she smiled, her lips parted. The priest, too, though he was as grave as ever, cradled her hand as if it was as fragile as a fledgling bird.

A baby was still a baby no matter what you intended to do with it, a lover still a lover no matter for what reasons you took him into your arms. Just as a little girl who was a slave was still a little girl. Life had a funny way of breaking through, just like the weeds and wild flowers that bravely grew in cracks in Etxelur's d.y.k.es and reservoirs, and had to be cleared out every summer by the small hands of the children.

Now Qili spoke. 'This is good news. There's nothing more precious than a new life - and nothing more fragile. All our friends at the estuary will wish you well.' His Etxelur language was now fluent, but heavily accented - and his tone was oddly wistful.

Arga turned to look at him, surprised. He looked as if he'd aged; his skin was faded, and there were bags of shadowed flesh under his eyes. She'd never paid him much attention, yet she could see that something was wrong. 'Are you all right? You sound sad.'

'I'm sorry,' he said firmly. 'This is your evening, Ana, not mine.'

'Tell us,' Arga said.

He shrugged, looking away from their gazes. 'It's nothing. Or rather, it's commonplace. We lost our new baby, my wife and I. She was half a year old. She just sickened and died. There was nothing our priest could do; if she was sick, she had something he didn't recognise.'

Arga nodded. 'Sometimes the moon just takes them back.'

Ana said, 'This little girl had Heni's blood in her. All of Etxelur will grieve with you.'

'It's commonplace,' Qili said again, as if convincing himself. 'Babies die all the time. We have other children.'

'It might be commonplace,' said Jurgi. 'More than half of us die before we leave childhood. Did you know that? But it is not commonplace when it happens to you.'

Knuckle grunted. 'I too have lost children, my friend.' His harsh snailhead accent was a contrast to Qili's more fluent tones. 'I won't say it gets easier. It doesn't. But, with time, you remember the joy of the life, rather than the pain of the death. And at least you will have the comfort of knowing she can never grow up to become a slave of the Pretani.'

Everybody stiffened. Arga saw Ana draw her hands back from the priest. If she had looked briefly like a human being, now she looked like Ana again, leader of Etxelur and builder of d.y.k.es. 'No folk of the World River will ever be slaves here. And nor will snailheads, Knuckle. You know that.'

'Do I?'

'The Pretani are our allies. We have agreements-'

'Allies?' Knuckle turned his head, elaborately looking around. 'If the Pretani are your friends, why do you not invite them into your house?' Evidently he was saying what he had come here to say. 'And if they did turn on us, would you stop them, Ana? Or would you rub your hands at the idea of getting your stone walls built even quicker?'

Novu stirred. Arga thought it was typical of him to wake up when his precious building works were mentioned. 'You mustn't bring the walls into this.'

Knuckle was incredulous. 'Why not? Without the walls, no stone and slaves. And no Pretani hanging around.'

Novu closed his eyes. 'Because whatever it takes to get the walls built is justified. Because when we are dead and gone, n.o.body will ever know how the walls were built or who by, slave or free. Any more than we know the names of the ice giants who built the hills and carved the bays. And that is the way it should be.' He stood. 'Whenever we talk, it is always this way. Chatter about nothing - never about the work. You may talk all you like; I've had enough.'

Jurgi said plaintively, 'Oh, Novu, wait-'

'Goodnight, Ana, the rest of you.' And he swept out through the door flap.

Jurgi grinned tiredly. 'I was only trying to tell him the sh.e.l.lfish smells cooked.'

Dreamer cleared away the burned-off sticks and gra.s.s, and set the wide-open sh.e.l.ls on wooden plates, with heaps of salt and crushed herbs.

Arga said, 'Do you think we should call Novu back?'

'No. Let him dream of his walls. More for us,' Knuckle said. He grinned as he took his plate and slurped down his first oyster.

75.

Kirike and Dolphin walked along the northern beach of Flint Island, heading towards the Giving platforms. Thunder scampered at their feet, happy to be out on the beach.

It was a bright morning, still a few days short of the solstice. But there was a mist in the air and an unseasonably brisk bite to the wind off the sea; frothy foam blew along the littoral, and the fis.h.i.+ng boats out at sea, grey shadows against the glittering water, were lifted by the waves. Gulls wheeled in the air, cawing, looking for food, competing for mates. To Dolphin they looked as if they were playing, and if she could fly, she thought with a deep, physical surge of joy, she would be up there playing with the best of them.

She and Kirike were still in a sleepy fug, after another long night in their own new house, the house they had built for themselves. She could smell the smoke of their fire about him, the sweet musk of his sweat. Just as every year under Ana's leaders.h.i.+p, the latest Giving was to be more lavish than ever, and there was plenty of work for everybody in Etxelur - but as far as Dolphin was concerned this morning, all that could wait.

But in the shade of a sandstone bluff at the top of the beach, outside a slumped hut, slaves were making rope.

Dolphin slowed, curious.

Etxelur always needed rope, for hauling timbers and stone, or dragging water sleds over the hillside. Making it was simple, repet.i.tive work that, the Pretani said, you could trust to a slave. So here were seven slaves working together in silence, one man, two women, four children, the youngest of whom was only maybe five years old.

They looked up as Kirike and Dolphin stood before them, the adults incurious, the children vaguely fearful. The dog sniffed around them, tail wagging, but the people ignored him.

The women sat together on the ground, their legs crossed. They were cleaning aurochs hide with small hand-held flint sc.r.a.pers, making soft repet.i.tive rasping sounds as they cleared the last bits of fat and ligament. Dolphin could see the hide had already been cleaned of hair by scorching. The man was pus.h.i.+ng a sc.r.a.ped hide into a pit, dug into the ground and lined with stone, skin and hardened mud. The pit stank of old urine. This was part of the complex process of tanning the hides. More hides lay at his feet in a heap, and Dolphin saw he had been cutting them into strips. Eventually these strips would be twisted and plaited into strong rope.

The children, meanwhile, were working on a heap of lime branches and logs. They used small flint knives to cut the bark from the wood and to divide it into strips. More pits full of water stood ready to take the bark; soaked, it would separate into long strands that could then be woven into string.

Dolphin saw that one little girl had cut the palm of her hand, for blood trickled down her arm. Her eyes were moist, but she didn't make a sound.

Their 'house' was just a slumped driftwood lean-to, heaped against the bluff. Their hearth was a shelf of pebbles scavenged from the beach, and Dolphin could see the remains of their food: offal and other sc.r.a.ps.

A family, working together, making rope. Slaves in Etxelur.

Kirike seemed uneasy. 'Why have we stopped?' he asked in the Etxelur tongue, a language the slaves probably wouldn't know.

'I-' Dolphin wasn't sure. She had been curious about the slaves since the first of them had been driven here by the Pretani a month ago, hauling stone.

'Let's go on,' Kirike said, uneasy.

'No, wait.' She let go of his hand and stepped forward. 'You,' she said to the man, switching to the traders' tongue. 'What's your name?'

The man looked up at her, unsmiling. He was gaunt, too thin, the joints showing in his arms like bags of hazelnuts. 'I make rope.' His accent was thick.

'You are a man, not just a rope-maker. Are you a father, a husband? What is your name?'

He didn't reply.

Kirike plucked her sleeve. 'Dolphin-'

The man's sullenness irritated her, and that reaction disturbed her. Unsure where she was going with this, she said now, 'Stand up.'

'I am working.'

She glanced around. The nearest Pretani was a fat brute of a man down at the sea's edge, squatting to s.h.i.+t into the sea. 'Do as I say or I'll call him over.'

Slowly, with evident reluctance, the man put down his hide and stood before her. He was shorter than she was. He had a tattoo coiled around one bare thigh, an eel with a gaping mouth. Dark, slim, not tall, he wasn't much older than she was, she realised.

The women and children bent over their work, not looking at Dolphin or Kirike.

'Tell me your name.'

'Wise,' he said at last. 'My name is Wise.'

She nodded. 'My name is Dolphin Gift. This is Kirike.'

He stared at her, and Kirike. 'What do you want?'

'Yes, what?' Kirike muttered in their own tongue.

'I don't know,' she said honestly. 'I never spoke to a slave before. Wise. You call yourself the People of the Great Eel.'

He was cautious in his replies. 'That is what we were.'

'Are these your children? Which of these women is their mother?'

Wise glared at her.

Kirike murmured in the Etxelur tongue, 'The Pretani ask questions like this. If they know which kid is yours they can make you work harder by threatening her.'