Land and Overland Omnibus

PART III

Silent Invasions





Chapter 11



By the time Sondeweere had been away for eighty days Bartan Drumme had developed a new pattern of living.

Each morning he went out and made some attempt to cultivate the nearer portions of his farm—that was a duty he could not ignore—but his real preoccupation was with his hoard of glass and ceramic demijohns, the source of his sustenance and comfort. The production and consumption of wine claimed most of his waking hours. He had learned to dispose of such niceties as using fresh yeast and of waiting for the wine to clear, the latter being an exercise in pointless aesthetics which had no effect on a beverage's alcohol content.

As soon as a jar of wine had ceased working he siphoned it off the dregs and poured in a new batch of juice expressed from fruit or berries, restarting the fermentation with the sludge of the old yeast. The yeast quickly became contaminated with wild strains, yielding wines which were marred by sourness and off-flavours, but the method had the overriding virtue of being fast.

Efficiency of production was all that mattered to Bartan. He frequently became ill and was racked by diarrhoea caused by drinking his murky potions, but that seemed a small price to pay for the ability to escape his guilt and to sleep the long night through. The bargain was enhanced by the fact that he had little need of solid food, the bubble-ringed glasses providing most of the nourishment he required to get through the weary succession of days.

Now that even the Phoratere family had left the Basket he had no companionship from other farmers, but he had given up riding into New Minnett to spend time in the tavern. The journey had begun to seem tedious and lacking in purpose when he had all he could drink at home, and in any case he could detect a new lack of warmth in his reception. Reeve Karrodall had counselled him about his drinking and personal appearance, and subsequently had become a much less congenial person with whom to while away the hours.

He was returning from the fields one day, just before sunset, when he noticed a flurry of movement ahead of him in the dust of the path. Closer inspection revealed that it was a crawler, the first he had seen in a long time. The glistening brown creature was labouring along the path in the direction of the house, with occasional flashes of pallid grey from its underside as it clambered over pebbles.

Bartan stared at it for a moment, his mouth twitching in revulsion, then looked around for a large stone. He found one which required two hands to lift, and dashed it down on the crawler. With his gaze averted in case he glimpsed the sickening result of his handiwork, he stepped over the stone and continued on his way. There were many varieties of small life forms to be found in the soil of Overland, most of them repugnant to his eye, but he usually left them alone to go about their business in peace. The sole exception was the crawler, which he had a compulsion to destroy on sight.

The house and outbuildings were bathed in a mellow red-gold light as he drew near, and he felt the familiar sinking of his spirits at the prospect of spending the night there alone. This was the worst time of the day, when he was met by silence in the house in place of Sondeweere's laughter, and the darkening dome of the sky seemed to reverberate with emptiness. The whole world felt empty at sunset. He passed the pigsty, which was also silent because he had turned the animals out into the wild to fend for themselves, and crossed the yard to the house. On opening the front door he paused, his heart beginning to pound as he realised the place felt different.

"Sondy!" he called out, giving way to an irrational impulse. He darted through the kitchen and flung open the bedroom door. The room beyond was empty, with no change in the squalor he had allowed to overwhelm it. Downcast and feeling like a fool, he nevertheless returned to the front entrance and scanned the surroundings. Everything was as usual in the sad coppery light, the only sign of movement coming from the bluehorn which was grazing near the orchard.

Bartan sighed, shaking his head over the bout of idiocy. He had a throbbing pain in his temples, legacy of the wine he had drunk in the afternoon, and he felt parched. He selected a full demijohn from the array in the corner, picked up a cup and returned outside to the bench by the door. The wine tasted less palatable than usual, but he drank the first two cupfuls greedily, pouring them down like water in order to win the blessed muzziness which dulled intellect and emotion. He had a feeling he was going to need it more than ever in the hours to come.

As darkness gathered and the heavens began to throng with their nightly display, he picked out Farland—the only green-tinted object in the firmament—and allowed his gaze to dwell on it. He still retained all his scepticism for religion, but of late had begun to understand the comforts it could offer. Assuming that Sondeweere was dead, it would be so good to believe, or even half-believe, that she had merely taken the High Path to the outer world and was beginning a new existence there. A simple reincarnation without continuance of memory or personality, which was what the Alternist religion postulated, was in many ways indistinguishable from straightforward death—but it offered something. It offered the hope that he had not totally destroyed a wonderful human life with his stubbornness and arrogance, that in the eternity which lay ahead he and Sondeweere would meet again, perhaps many times, and that he would be able to make amends to her in some way. The fact that they would not consciously recognise each other, and yet might respond as soul mates, unaccountably drawn to each other, made the whole concept romantically beautiful and poignant…

Tears flooded Bartan's eyes, expanding the image of Farland into consecutive rings filled with radial prismatic needles. He gulped down more wine to ease the choking pain in his throat.

Let me know that you are up there, Sondy, he pleaded in his thoughts, surrendering to the fantasy. If only you could grant me a sign that you still exist, I too would begin to live again.

He continued drinking as Farland drifted down the sky. Now and again he lost consciousness through exhaustion and increasing intoxication, but when he opened his eyes the green planet was always centred in his field of vision, sometimes as a swirling luminous bubble, at others in the semblance of a circular chalcedonic gem, slowly rotating, striking a languorous green fire from a thousand facets. It seemed to grow bigger, and bigger, finally to develop a mobile core which displayed a creamy luminance, a core which by imperceptible stages evolved into the likeness of a woman's face.

Bartan, Sondeweere said, not in an ordinary voice, but an inversion of sound in which one kind of silence was imposed on another. Poor Bartan, I have been aware of your pain, and I am glad that I have at last succeeded in reaching you. You must desist from blaming yourself, and punishing yourself, and thus squandering your one-and-only life. You have no reason to reproach yourself on my account.

"But I brought you to this place," Bartan mumbled, unastonished, playing the game of dreams. "I am responsible for your death."

If I were dead I would be unable to speak to you.

Bartan replied in his fuddled obstinacy. "The crime remains. I deprived you of a life—the one we should have shared—and you were so lovely, so sweet, so good…"

You must remember me as I actually was, Bartan. Do not fuel your self-pity by imagining that I was anything but a very ordinary woman.

"So good, so pure…"

Bartan! It may help you if I make you aware that I was never faithful to you. Glave Trinchil was only one of the men from whom I took my pleasures. There were many of them—including my Uncle Jop…

"That isn't true! I have dreamed foul lies into your mouth." On another level of Bartan's drugged consciousness there came the first stirrings of comprehension and wonder: This is not a dream! This is really happening!

That is so, Bartan. The non-voice, the modulations of silence, somehow conveyed wisdom and kindliness. This is really happening, but it will not happen again—so mark well what I am saying. I am not dead! You must stop torturing yourself and dissipating your one-and-only life. Put the past behind you and go on to other things. Above all, forget about me. Goodbye, Bartan…

The sound of his cup splintering on the ground brought Bartan to his feet. He stood there in the star-shot darkness, swaying and shivering, staring at Farland, which was now just above the western horizon. It registered as a point of pure green light without fringes or optical adornments—but for the first time he saw it as another planet, a world, a real place which was as large as Land or Overland, a seat of life.

"Sondy!" he called out, running a few futile paces forward. "Sondy!"

Farland continued its slow descent to the rim of the world.

Bartan went back into the house, fetched another cup and returned to his bench. He filled the cup and drank from it in small, regular, relentless sips as the enigmatic mote of brilliance gradually extinguished itself, winking on the horizon. When it had vanished from sight he found that his mind had acquired a strange and precarious clarity, an ability—which had to fade soon—to deal with unearthly concepts. Momentous judgments and decisions had to be made quickly, before a vinous tide swept him into lasting unconsciousness.

"I still repudiate all religious belief," he announced to the darkness, calling on the act of speaking aloud to help imprint his thinking on the coming days and years.

"In doing so I am being totally logical. How do I know I'm being totally logical? Because the Alternists preach that only the soul, the spiritual essence, ventures along the High Path. It is an article of faith that there is no continuance of memory—otherwise every man, woman and child would be burdened beyond endurance with recollections of previous existences. It is obvious that Sondeweere remembers me and every circumstance of our lives—therefore she cannot be an Alternist reincarnation.

"As well as that, there are no known instances of those who have passed on communicating with those who remain. And Sondeweere herself referred to my one-and-only life, which … which does not really prove anything … but if we all have only one life, and she spoke to me, that proves her life has not ended…

"Sondeweere is physically alive somewhere!"

Bartan shivered and took a longer drink, blurrily elated and overwhelmed at the same time. His momentous discovery had brought many questions in its wake, questions of a kind he was not accustomed to dealing with. Why was he persuaded that Sondeweere was on Farland and not, as was much more likely, in another part of his own world? Was it that the apparition had been so intimately associated with the image of the green planet, or had the strange voiceless message from her been layered with meanings not contained in the bare words? And if she were on Farland—how had she been transported? And why? Was it something to do with the inexplicable lights he had seen on the night of her disappearance? And, granting the other suppositions, what had given her the miraculous ability to speak to him across thousands of miles of space?

And—most pressing of all—now that he had been vouchsafed the new knowledge, what was he going to do with it? What action was he going to take?

Bartan grinned, staring glassily into the darkness. The last question had been the only one to which he could easily supply an answer.

It was obvious that he had to go to Farland and bring Sondeweere home!

"Your wife was abducted!" Reeve Majin Karrodall's cry of astonishment was followed by an attentive silence among the tavern's other customers.

Bartan nodded. "That's what I said."

Karrodall moved closer to him, hand dropping to the hilt of his smallsword. "Do you know who did it? Do you know where she is?"

"I don't know who was responsible, but I know where she is," Bartan said. "My wife is living on Farland."

Some of those nearby emitted gleeful sniggers and the group around him began to increase in size. Karrodall gave them an impatient glance, his red face deepening in colour, before he narrowed his eyes at Bartan.

"Did you say Farland? Are you talking about Farland … in the sky?"

"I am indeed talking about the planet Farland," Bartan said solemnly. He reached for the alepot which had been set out for him, overbalanced and had to grasp the table for a moment of support.

"You'd better sit down before you fall down." Karrodall waited until Bartan lowered himself on to a bench. "Bartan, is this more of Trinchil's teachings? Are you trying to say your wife has died and travelled the High Path?"

"I'm saying she is alive. On Farland." Bartan drank deeply from the alepot. "Is that so hard to understand?"

Karrodall straddled the bench. "What's hard to understand is why you let yourself into a condition which so ill becomes you. You look terrible, you stink—and not only of bad wine—and now you are so soused that your talk is that of a madman. I have told you this before, Bartan, but you must quit the Haunt before it is too late."

"I have already done so," Bartan said, wiping froth from his lips with the back of a hand. "I'll never set foot there again."

"At least that is one sensible decision on your part. Where will you go?"

"Have I not said?" Bartan surveyed the ring of gleefully incredulous faces. "Why, I'm going to Farland to rescue my wife."

There was an outbreak of laughter which the reeve's authority could no longer hold in check. More men crowded around Bartan, while others hurried away to spread the word of the unexpected sport which was to be had at the tavern. Somebody slid a fresh tankard into place in front of Bartan.

The plump, limping figure of Otler approached the group, shouldered his way in and said, "But, my friend, how do you know that your wife has taken up residence on Farland?"

"She told me three nights ago. She spoke to me."

Otler nudged the man beside him. "The woman looked as though she had a healthy set of bellows, but they must have been better than we knew. What do you say, Alsorn?"

The remark disturbed Bartan's alcoholic composure. He grabbed Otler's shirt and tried to pull him down on to the bench, but the reeve thrust them apart and swung a warning finger between the two men.

"All I meant," Otler complained, tucking his shirt back into his breeches, "was that Farland is a long way off." He brightened up as a witticism occurred to him. "I mean, that's what Farland means, isn't it? Far-land!"

"Being in your company is an education in itself," Bartan said. "Sondeweere appeared to me in a vision. She spoke to me in a vision."

Again there was a burst of merriment, and Bartan—stupefied though he was—recognised that he had only succeeded in making himself a figure of fun.

"Gentlemen," he said, rising unsteadily to his feet. "I have tarried here too long, and soon I must depart for the noble city of Prad. I have spent the past two days repairing and refurbishing my wagon—therefore the journey should not be overly prolonged—but nevertheless I will have need of money along the way for the purchase of food and perhaps just a little wine or brandy." He nodded in acknowledgment of an ironic cheer.

"My airboat is on the wagon outside—it needs only a new gasbag—and in addition I have brought some good furniture and tools. Who will give me a hundred royals for the lot?"

Some of the listeners moved away to inspect what was undoubtedly a bargain, but others were more interested in prolonging the entertainment. "You haven't told us how you propose to reach Farland," a hollow-cheeked merchant said. "Will you shoot yourself out of a cannon?"

"I have as yet little idea how to make the flight, and that is why I must begin my journey by going to Prad. There is one man there who knows more about journeying through the sky than any other, and I shall seek him out."

"What is his name?"

"Maraquine," Bartan said. "Sky Marshal Lord Toller Maraquine."

"I'm sure he'll be very glad to see you," Otler said, nodding in mock-approval. "His lordship and you will make a fine pair."

"Enough of this!" Karrodall gripped Bartan's arm and forcibly drew him away from the group. "Bartan, it grieves me to see you thus, with all your drunken babbling about Farland and visions … and now this talk of trying to approach the King-slayer. You can't be serious about that."

"Why not?" Striving to look dignified, Bartan prised the reeve's fingers off his arm. "Now that the war is ending Lord Toller will have no further use for his fortresses in the sky. When he hears my proposal to fly one of them to Farland—bearing the flag of Kolcorron, mark you—he will doubtless be pleased to give me his patronage."

"I am sorry for you," Karrodall remarked sadly. "I am truly sorry for you."

As he travelled to the east Bartan kept an eye on the horizon ahead, and eventually was rewarded with his first sight of Land in along time.

In the beginning the sister world appeared as a curving sliver of pale light atop the distant mountains, then as the journey progressed it gradually rose higher to become a glowing dome. The nights grew noticeably longer as Land encroached upon more and more of the sun's path. As the planet continued its upward drift, to show a semi-circle and more, the outlines of the continents and oceans became clearly visible, evocations of lost histories.

Eventually there came the time when Land's lower edge lifted clear of the horizon, creating a narrow gap through which the rising sun could pour mingling rays of multi-coloured fire. The diurnal pattern of light and darkness, familiar to born Kolcorronians, was beginning to re-establish itself, although at this stage foreday was extremely brief. For Bartan—journeying alone in dusty landscapes—the occasion was a significant one, worth commemorating with extra measures of brandy.

He knew that when foreday and aftday reached a balance he would be close to the city of Prad, and from that moment onwards his future would be in the hands of a stranger.