Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 9



At the sound of the wagon approaching Bartan Drumme stood up and went to the mirror which hung on the kitchen wall. It felt odd for him not to be dressed in work clothes, and even the face which regarded him from the glass seemed unfamiliar. The boyish, humorous look—which had once earned him the farmers' mistrust—was no longer present, and instead there were the hard, sun-darkened features of a man who was no stranger to solitude, sorrow and relentless toil. He smoothed down his black hair, adjusted the collar of his shirt and went to the farmhouse door.

The Phorateres' wagon was drawing to a halt outside, amid much snorting from an elderly bluehorn which was sweating after the journey in the midday sun. Harro and Ennda waved and called a greeting to Bartan. They had actively befriended him since the grim incident at their farm, and it had been at Ennda's insistence that he had agreed to take some hours off and go into New Minnett to relax. He assisted her down from the tall vehicle and, while Harro was leading the bluehorn to the water trough, slowly walked with her to the house.

"What a handsome young toff you look today," she said, a smile erasing the look of tiredness on her face.

"I managed to preserve one good shirt and one pair of trews, but they seem to have shrunk somewhat."

"You have expanded." She halted to give him an appraising look. "It's difficult to realise you are the same baby-face who used to try to dazzle us with his clever city talk."

"I don't talk much at all these days," Bartan said ruefully. "There isn't much point in it."

Ennda gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. "Has Sondy not improved in any way? How long has it been? Close on two hundred days?"

"Two hundred! I've lost track of the time, but it must be something like that. Sondy remains as she was, but I'm not giving up hope."

"Good for you! Now, is she still in the bedroom?"

Bartan nodded, ushered Ennda into the house and led the way to the bedroom. He pushed open the door to reveal Sondeweere sitting on the edge of the bed in a full-length white nightdress. She was staring at the opposite wall and remained that way, apparently unaware of the presence of others. Her yellow hair was well brushed, but was unimaginatively arranged in a way which showed that Bartan had done it.

Ennda went into the room, knelt in front of Sondeweere and gathered her unresisting hands into hers. "Hello, Sondy," she said in a gentle but cheerful voice. "How are you today?"

Sondeweere made no response. The beautiful face was untroubled, the eyes unseeing.

Ennda kissed her on the forehead, stood up and returned to Bartan. "All right, young man! You can go off to town and enjoy yourself for a few hours and leave everything to me. Just tell me what has to be done about Sondy's food and the … mmm … consequences."

"Consequences?" Bartan gazed at Ennda in puzzlement until a look of exasperation made her meaning clear. "Oh! You don't have to do anything. She keeps herself clean, attends to all the basics by herself and eats anything that is prepared for her. It's just that nobody else seems to exist for her. She never speaks. She sits there on the bed all day, staring at the wall, and I don't exist. Perhaps I deserve it. Perhaps it's my punishment for bringing her to this place."

"Now you're being silly." Ennda put her arms around him and he clung to her, immensely comforted by her aura of warmth, femininity and resilience.

"What have we here?" Harro Phoratere boomed jovially, entering the shady kitchen from the sunlight outside. "Is one woman not enough for you, young Bartan?"

"Harro!" Ennda rounded on her husband. "What kind of a thing is that to say?"

"I'm sorry, lad—I wasn't thinking about your Sondy being…" Harro hesitated, the circular bite-scar glowing whitely against the pink of his cheek. "I'm sorry."

"No need to apologise," Bartan said. "I appreciate your coming here—it's more than generous."

"Nonsense! It's a welcome break for me as well. I intend to spend a very lazy aftday and—I give you fair warning—to consume a quantity of your wine." Harro glanced anxiously at the group of empty demijohns in a corner. "You do have some left, I trust."

"You'll find ample supplies in the cellar, Harro. It's the only solace left to me and I take care never to run short."

"I hope you don't drink too much," Ennda said, showing some concern.

Bartan smiled at her. "Only enough to guarantee a night's sleep. It's too quiet here—much too quiet."

Ennda nodded. "I'm sorry you have to bear your burden alone, Bartan, but it's all we can do to manage our own section now that so many of our family have given up and moved north. Did you know that the Wilvers and the Obrigails have gone as well?"

"After all their work! How many families are left now?"

"Five, apart from us."

Bartan shook his head dispiritedly. "If only the people would wait and…"

"If you wait around here much longer it'll be dark before you reach the tavern," Ennda cut in, pushing him towards the front entrance. "Go off and enjoy yourself for a few hours. Go on—out!"

With a last glance at his wife, withdrawn to her inaccessible world, Bartan went outside and summoned his bluehorn with a whistle. Within a few minutes he had it saddled and was riding west to New Minnett. He was unable to shake off the feeling that he was doing something shameful, planning to spend half a day free of his crushing burden of work and responsibility, but the fierceness of his hunger for a spell in the undemanding company of amiable topers told him the excursion would be remedial.

The ride through pastoral scenery was refreshing in itself, and on reaching the township he was surprised by his reaction to the sight of unknown people, clusters of buildings in a variety of sizes and styles, and the lofty rigging of sea-going ships at anchor in the river. When he had seen New Minnett for the first time it had seemed a tiny and remote outpost of civilisation—now, after his lengthy incarceration on the farm, it was a veritable metropolis.

He rode straight to the open-fronted building used as a tavern and was gratified to find in it many of the local characters who had welcomed him and his airboat on that far-off first visit. Compared to the harrowing downward trend of life in the Basket, it was as though the townsfolk had been suspended in time, preserved, ready to spring to life at his behest. The reeve, Majin Karrodall, was present—wearing his smallsword—as was the plump Otler, still protesting his sobriety, and a dozen other remembered individuals whose obvious contentment with their lot was a reassurance that life in general was well worth the living.

Bartan happily drank the strong brown ale with them, finding room for pot after pot of it without wearying of the taste. He was appreciative of the way in which the men—including Otler, who was not known for his tact—made no reference to his people's continuing evacuation of the Haunt. As though sympathising with the reasons for his visit they kept the talk on general subjects, much of the time discussing the latest news of the strange war that was being fought in the sky above the far side of the planet. The notion of a new breed of warriors who rode through the heavens on the backs of jet engines, without the support of balloons, seemed to have fired their imaginations. In particular, Bartan was struck by how often the name of Lord Toller Maraquine came up.

"Is it true that this Maraquine slew two kings at the time of the Migration?" he said.

"Of course it's true!" Otler banged his alepot down on the long table. "Why do you think they call him the Kingslayer? I was there, my friend! Saw it with my own eyes!"

"Balderdash!" Karrodall shouted amid a general cry of derision.

"Well, perhaps I didn't actually see what happened," Otler conceded, "but I saw King Prad's ship fall like a stone." He turned his shoulder to the others and aimed his words at Bartan. "I was a young soldier at the time—Fourth Sorka Regiment—and I was in one of the very first ships to leave Ro-Atabri. I never thought I'd complete the journey, but that is another story."

"One we've heard a thousand times," another man said, nudging his neighbour.

Otler made an obscene gesture at him. "You see, Bartan, Prad's ship got entangled with the one which Toller Maraquine was flying. Chakkell, who was then a prince, and Daseene and their three children were in Toller's ship, and he saved their lives by pushing the two ships apart. It took the strength of ten men, but he did it single-handed, and Prad's ship went down. I saw it plunge past me, and I'll never forget the way Prad was standing there at the rail. Tall and straight he was, unafraid, and his one blind eye was shining like a star.

"His death meant that Prince Leddravohr became King, and three days later—after the landing—Leddravohr and Toller fought a duel which lasted six hours. It ended when Toller struck Leddravohr's head off his shoulders with a single blow!"

"He must have been quite a man," Bartan said drily, trying to separate fact from fiction.

"Strength of ten! And what do you mean by must have been quite a man? None of those striplings up there can keep pace with him to this day. Do you know that in the first battle against the Landers, after all his fire arrows had been expended, he started cutting their balloons into shreds with his white sword? The selfsame sword with which he overcame Karkarand—Karkarand, mark you!—with only one blow. I tell you, Bartan, we owe that man everything. If I were twenty years younger, and didn't have this bad knee, I'd be up there with him at this very minute."

Reeve Karrodall guffawed into his beer. "I thought you said they had no need of gasbags at the midpoint."

"Very droll," Otler muttered. "Very droll indeed."

The following hours slipped by pleasantly and quickly for Bartan, and it was with some surprise that he noticed the sun's rays slanting redly into the tavern at a shallow angle. "Gentlemen," he said, getting to his feet, "I have stayed longer than it was my intention to do. I must leave you now."

"Have but one more," Karrodall said.

"I'm sorry, but I am obliged to leave. Friends are attending to the farm for me, and I have already done them a discourtesy."

Karrodall stood and took Bartan's hand. "I heard about your wife's misfortune, and I'm sorry," he whispered. "Would you not consider taking her away from that baneful place?"

"The place is just a place," Bartan said lightly, determined not to be offended at this late stage of the gathering, "and I won't surrender it. Good-bye, Majin."

"Good luck, son!"

Bartan saluted the rest of the company and walked out to where his bluehorn was tethered. The alcoholic warmth in his stomach and the pleasant optimistic tingle in his brain, important allies in the day-to-day battle of life, were at their height. He felt privileged to be alive, a beautiful feeling which in the past had suffused his existence, but which of late could only be recaptured near the bottom of a demijohn of black wine. He hoisted himself into the saddle and nudged the bluehorn forward, delegating to the intelligent creature the task of getting him home.

As the sky gradually deepened in colour the daytime stars became more prominent, and the spirals and braids of misty light began to emerge from the background. There were more major comets than usual. Bartan counted eight of them, their tails fanning right across the dome of the heavens, creating alternate bands of silver and dark blue among which meteors darted like fireflies. In his mellow speculative mood he wondered if men would ever solve the mystery of the sky's largest features. The stars were thought to be distant suns; the single green point of brilliance was known to be a third planet, Farland; and the nature of meteors was well understood because sometimes they crashed to the ground, leaving craters of various sizes. But what was the vast whirlpool of radiance which spanned the entire night sky for part of the year? Why did the heavenly population contain so many similar but smaller spirals, sometimes overlapping each other, ranging in shape from circles through ellipses to glowing spindles which concealed their structure until examined by telescope?

The train of thought caused Bartan to pay more attention than usual to the luminous arches of the sky, and thus it was that he noticed an entirely new phenomenon which might otherwise have escaped him. Due east, roughly in the direction of his farm, he saw a tiny and oddly-formed patch of light a short distance above the horizon. It was like a four-pointed star with in-curved sides, the kind of geometrical shape created at the middle of four touching circles, and each point appeared to be emitting a faint spray of prismatic colour. The object was too small to yield much detail without a glass, but its centre seemed to be teeming with multi-hued specks of brilliance. Intrigued, Bartan watched the eerily beautiful apparition sink swiftly downwards and pass out of sight behind the crest of the nearest drumlin.

Shaking his head in wonderment, Bartan urged his bluehorn forward to the high ground, greatly extending his range of vision, but the object was nowhere to be seen. What had it been? Meteors falling to earth sometimes blossomed into vivid colour, but they were accompanied by violent thunderclaps, whereas the phenomenon he had just witnessed had been characterised by silence and the smoothness of its movement. He tentatively reached the conclusion that the object had been much larger than he had supposed, dwarfed by distance, mysteriously sailing through space far beyond Overland's atmosphere.

With his mind fuelled for further musings about the wonders of the universe, Bartan continued on his way. Almost an hour later he caught the first glimpse of the yellow lights of his own farmhouse and felt a fresh pang of guilt over having detained the Phorateres until after darkness. The fact that Sondeweere and he had only one bed made it difficult for him to invite them to stay until morning, unless Harro and he were to spend the night sleeping on the floor. It seemed a poor reward for their kindness to him, especially as neighbourly acts had become so rare in the Basket. Wondering how he was going to excuse himself, he increased the bluehorn's speed to a trot, trusting it to maintain a sure footing on the star-silvered ground.

He was about a mile from the house when his surroundings were suddenly drenched in a varicoloured light so intense that his eyes reflexively clamped themselves shut.

The bluehorn reared up, barking in terror, and Bartan clung to it, quaking in expectation of the cataclysmic explosion which instinct told him had to accompany such a flash of brilliance. There was no explosion—only a ringing, reverberating silence during which he felt his clothing ripple and flap although there was no rush of air. He opened his eyes as the bluehorn dropped its forefeet to the ground. He found himself to be virtually blinded by after-images of trees and shrubs, orange and green silhouettes which seemed permanently printed on his retinas.

"Steady, old girl, steady," he breathed, patting the animal's neck. He blinked hard, knuckled his eyes and looked all about him in search of clues as to the origins of the bewildering, frightening and wildly unnatural event. The dark landscape had regained its eternal quietude. The sleeping world was trying to reassure him that things were as they had always been, but Bartan—prey to crawling apprehensions—knew better.

He urged the bluehorn forward as fast as he dared and in a few minutes was approaching the farmhouse. The very fact that Harro and Ennda were not outside and scanning the skies was a subtle indication that things were seriously amiss. Or was it? Perhaps he had been caught up in an essentially local disturbance of nature—after all, there were those who claimed that lightning sprang out of the ground, entirely contrary to the popular belief that it struck downwards from the heavens. He rode into the yard, dismounted and went to the farmhouse door. When he opened it the scene before him was a tableau of commonplace domesticity—Ennda doing her embroidery work on a sun hat, Harro in the act of tilting a demijohn to pour himself a cup of wine.

Bartan sighed with relief and then hesitated, his uneasiness returning, as he realised that the couple were indeed like part of a tableau. They were unmoving, rigid as statues. The only hint of animation in their features was a false one, due to the flickering of the lanterns in the draught from the open door.

"Harro? Ennda?" Bartan advanced uncertainly into the kitchen. "I … I'm sorry I'm so late."

Ennda's needle began to move on the instant, and wine gurgled into Harro's cup. "Don't fret yourself, Bartan," Ennda said. "The sun has hardly set, and…" She looked through the doorway into the blackness beyond and began to frown. "That's strange! How did it…?" Her words were lost in a dulled splintering of glass as the demijohn Harro had been holding crashed on the stone floor. Tentacles of dark wine raced outwards from the shattered vessel.

"Curses!" Harro grabbed at his right shoulder and massaged it. "My arm hurts! My arm is so tired that it … hurts!" He looked down at the floor and his eyes grew round in self-reproach. "I'm sorry, lad—I don't know what…"

"It doesn't matter," Bartan cut in. "What about the light? What do you think it was?"

"The light?"

"The blinding light. The light, for pity's sake! What do you think caused it?"

Harro glanced at his wife. "We didn't see any lights. Did you by any chance fall and knock your head?"

"I'm not drunk." Bartan was staring at the couple in perplexity when his gaze was drawn to the bedroom door. It was partially open, allowing a strip of light to slant across the bed, and from what he could see of it the bed appeared to be empty. He strode across the kitchen and pushed the bedroom door fully open. Sondeweere was not in the small square room beyond.

"Where is Sondy?" he said quietly.

"What?" Harro and Ennda leapt to their feet and came to his side, their faces registering astonishment.

"Where is Sondy?" Bartan repeated. "Did you let her go outside alone?"

"Of course not! She's in there!" Ennda thrust her way past him and halted, confounded by the room's patent emptiness and lack of hiding places.

"You must have been asleep," Bartan said. "She must have gone out past you when you were asleep."

"I wasn't asleep. This is imposs—" Ennda paused and pressed a hand to her forehead. "There's no point in our standing around here arguing. We have to go out and find her."

"Take the lights." Bartan picked up a tubular lantern and hurried outside. Even after they had checked the lavatory hut and found it empty he was still only mildly concerned. Although Sondeweere had never strayed like this before, there were no predatory wild animals in the area, no cliffs or crevasses to threaten her safety. Her absence might even be a good omen, a sign that she was at last beginning to emerge from the shadow which had dimmed her mind and occulted her personality for so long.

It was not until they had been searching and calling her name for more than an hour that a different kind of premonition began to exercise its sway. Firstly, there had been the terrifying manifestation , the unbearable cascade of light; secondly, his wife had mysteriously vanished—and there had to be a connection between the two events. The Haunt—it had been naive and futile to rechristen it the Basket of Eggs—was going about its malign activities again, and Sondeweere had become its latest victim. He had been given ample opportunity to take her away from the place of evil, but in his stubbornness and intellectual arrogance he had continued to expose her to dangers that no man understood. And this was the inevitable outcome…

"This blundering about in the darkness will gain us little," Harro Phoratere said, tiredness and reason combining in his voice. "We should repair to the house and conserve our strength till daybreak. What do you say?"

"I think you're right," Bartan said dully.

The farmhouse had grown cold by the time they reached it, and while Bartan was preparing a fire in the hearth Harro busied himself by fetching a full demijohn from the cellar and pouring three cups of black wine. But, far from comforting Bartan, the cosy firelit ambience served only to remind him that he had no right to be enjoying the luxury while his wife was wandering somewhere in the night. At best she was cold and lost; at worst…

"How could a thing like this happen?" he said. "If I had known a thing like this could happen I would never have left her side."

"I suppose I could have fallen asleep," Harro said. "The wine…"

"But Ennda was with you."

Ennda, who had apparently been on the verge of sleep, turned on Bartan immediately, her face twisted with fury. "What are you trying to say, city boy? Are you hinting that I killed your young whore? Do you think I ate her face off? Is that what you are saying? But where is the blood? Do you see any blood on my person? Or on this?" She gripped the neck of her blue blouse with both hands and ripped it downwards, partially exposing her breasts.

Bartan was aghast. "Ennda! Please! I had no thought of…"

She silenced him by springing out of her chair and dashing her cup into the fireplace. "I keep the dream at bay! It can't devour me any more, and that's the truth!"

Harro stood up and embraced his wife, drawing her tortured face against his shoulder. She leaned into him, sobbing and trembling violently. The wine she had thrown hissed and sputtered in the fire.

"I…" Bartan stood up and set his drink aside. "I didn't know the dream persisted."

"This happens sometimes," Harro said, his eyes contrite, miserable and haunted. "It would be best if I took her home."

"Home?" Ennda, the manic energy having been drained from her, spoke like a child. "Yes, Harro, please take me home … away from this terrible land … back east to Ro-Amass. I can't live this way any longer. Let's go back to our real home, where we were happy."

"Perhaps you're right," Harro murmured, patting her on the back. "We'll talk about it in the morning."

Ennda turned her head and looked at Bartan with a tremulous smile. "And what have I done to you, Bartan? You're a good boy, and Sondy is a good girl. I didn't mean anything I said."

"I know that," Bartan said uncomfortably. "There is no need for you to leave."

Harro shook his head. "No, lad, we'll go now, but I'll come back in the morning with extra hands. If Sondy hasn't shown up by that time we'll soon find her. You'll see."

"Thanks, Harro." Bartan went outside with the couple and helped them harness their bluehorn to the wagon. Throughout the task he was unable to prevent himself from scanning his dimly seen surroundings, hoping to pick out a drifting patch of white which would betoken Sondeweere's safe return.

His vigilance went unrewarded.

Unknown to Bartan, he was entering the blackest phase of his life, one in which—over a period of several days—he would come to accept that his dumb, tranced wife had departed his world for ever.