Earth and Air Read online

  She lost herself for a while, reliving the event. Slowly the memories faded and she returned to the here and now.

  It was early dawn. The owls, silenced by the midnight riot, had not returned, but a couple of birds were whistling left over fragments of their full summer song. Sophie lay and thought about herself. No loves? At best, the sort of vague and already regretful affection she felt for Josh? No passions? No ecstasies? Things she could give to Josh, but not to herself? Yes, that was beyond her powers. She could have anything else, fame, wealth, love . . .

  Love, without loving in return, is that love?

  She sighed, and for a treacherous moment looked back. There had been a child once, difficult, wayward, passionate—what sort of life might she have had, but for the touch of an ash sapling?

  If she had wished, Sophie could have summoned out of this very wood the stuff that had been Phyllida Blackett—ashes burnt over three hundred years ago, washed into this earth by winter rains, drawn by summer suns into branch and leaf, fallen and rotted into the earth again, cycle after cycle—summoned them and reformed them and caused Phyllida Blackett to walk once more across this glade, no wraith but the living flesh. It would have taken a tremendous exercise of power, but the power was there, hers.

  So, surely, it would have been simple by comparison to call back the child Sophie had been, merely the spirit, for the flesh was already here, now, in this tent, and to let the child inhabit the flesh, imbue it with her old, passionate nature, so that she could love as well as be loved, love Josh, if for a season only, for these two days out only . . .

  She wasn’t conscious of having reached out and grasped the broomstick where she had laid it beside the sleeping bag, but she found she had done so, and now the wizand interrupted the reverie, speaking in her mind.

  “No. I.”

  Automatically Sophie interpreted the two cryptic syllables, but the toneless voice in her head told her nothing of the wizand’s own satisfaction at another phase in its life cycle safely embarked on in last night’s orgasm of transferred powers.

  No, that is not for you. Never. I am your lover. I alone. I.

  Phase A

  Suppose Sophie had chosen, as she now had the power to, to look a generation or two into the future and see what would then have been happening in this glade where she lay, and in the valley beneath it, what might that future have been? If we assume no huge disrupting changes in the culture of the British Isles, and no accident to herself against which even her accumulated powers could not protect her, it would have been something like this:

  In the glade itself, on the site of the present mound, stands a modest dwelling, made of modern materials but still very much in the spirit of the cottage in which Phyllida Blackett once lived, small-windowed, neat and unpretentious. Around it, growing surprisingly stoutly in so shaded a spot, is an orderly vegetable garden that includes a large plot of herbs, not all of them culinary.

  A woman comes to the door. She is in late middle age, soberly dressed, well kempt and apparently healthy. Despite that there is a worn look about her, not tired, not tense or fretted, but with something of the air of a mediaeval statue on the west front of a great cathedral, purified by time and tempest, though in the woman’s case the weather she has endured has been internal.

  She has a broom in her hand with which she sweeps her doorstep. She replaces it behind the door and goes into the wood. There is no need to lock the door. Those brush strokes are ward enough.

  Sophie’s foreseeing eye doesn’t follow her, but instead transfers its gaze to the village down the hill. Here not much has visibly changed. The public telephone box is a different shape and colour and is topped by a satellite dish. Most cars are electrical, and so on. But very few of the houses have been much altered, and despite the huge increase, nationwide, in the size of the average village, no new building has taken place here. It looks like a village where nothing much has happened for a long while.

  Despite that, it has recently been in the news, thanks to a violent and public squabble between the vicar and his bishop, all the more surprising as the vicar has hitherto been one of those elderly ineffectual priests, drifting towards retirement, and meanwhile conducting soporific church services attended by only a handful of his older parishioners, out of habit. Why should such a man suddenly be granted a vision and a voice, the vision having more, apparently, to do with Satan than with God, but the voice so emphatic, so convinced and convincing, that parishioners who have attended the odd service out of curiosity to observe the change, have continued to come with steadily increasing fervour? And when the bishop, hearing of this, has suggested to the vicar that some of the views expressed are verging on the heretical, have united behind him so unanimously that visiting journalists, looking for a jolly row between entrenched local worthies, have not been able to raise a single quotable slur?

  These are early days still. It will be several years before the congregation definitively secedes from the mother church, and becomes more and more exclusive and reclusive as it unconsciously prepares itself to play its part, as necessary to the wizand as either of its two symbiotes, in what will perhaps be the final recurrence of that cyclical outburst of public witch frenzy that has so puzzled the historians of mediaeval Europe.

  But it is not necessary to the wizand that Sophie should foresee any of that, and so she chooses not to.

  Talaria

  Varro escaped into the desert, as many, many slaves had done before him, whose bones now bleached among the dunes. Not his, though, or possibly not. It depended on the star maps.

  Six weeks earlier, as part of the seven-yearly ritual cleansing of the household, he had been switched from his normal job in the stables and told to go and fetch and carry in the library, and there he had found the book. It was in Latin, a language few of these barbarians had bothered to learn—even Prince Fo’s librarian had little more than a smattering. He hid it aside, and in snatched moments—the librarian evidently detested the cleansing and kept no discipline—he read it.

  It purported to be a geography of Timbuktu and the region around it, compiled from travellers’ accounts. Of course it was full of nonsense about Sphinxes and Sciopods and such, but here and there were patches of realism, details of trade routes and currency, descriptions of customs that Varro knew well from his five years in the city, and so on. The trade routes were no use to him. They were efficiently watched. The only hope was the desert. If you got a good enough start the bounty hunters wouldn’t come up with you before they needed, for their own safety, to turn back. You could plod on, until the desert killed you.

  To his astonishment and terror he found what he wanted, details of a forgotten route across the desert, far shorter than the still-used route around it, to one of Timbuktu’s distant trading partners, Dassun. Most of the account was sensible, apart from the odd absurdity about a demon-guarded spring. There were neat little star maps. Varro studied the pages, his throat dry, his heart pumping, his palms chilly with sweat. He was a saddler by profession. Five years ago he had come to Timbuktu to explore the possibilities of trading his wares into the city, to the displeasure of the local guild, who had had him arrested on a false accusation of debt. Not only all his stock but his own person had been sold to pay the imaginary sum, the judge openly pocketing a third of it. As he had stood in the slave market he had vowed to Mercury, god of travellers, that if the opportunity to escape came he would take it. This was his first true chance.

  Risking an hour, at least, beneath the lash he tore the two pages from the book, added a map of the city and its surroundings, folded them and tucked them into his loincloth. He was reasonably sure he wouldn’t be searched on leaving the library. His master maintained it only because a nobleman should have such a thing, so as far as the rest of the household were concerned there was nothing worth stealing in it.

  The slaves slept on the roof of their quarters. Studying the stars, and thus checking the accuracy of the maps, was no problem. Slaves played k
nucklebones in their spare time, wagering trivial items they’d been able to filch during the day. Varro understood the odds better than most, but took care to let the others think he was just a lucky player. As a saddler he already had a good knife, and now began, grudgingly, to accept scraps of food in part settlement of bets. He couldn’t hoard openly for the journey, because of the certainty of betrayal. Every other slave would be whipped when he was found to have gone, on the assumption that at least one of them must have helped him, whereas any of them who prevented an escape would be given a tiny share of the notional bounty. Some of the slaves were expert in such betrayals. One, in particular, a man called Karan, had roused unfounded suspicions that had cost Varro the lives of two of his friends.

  Slaves were issued annually with a length of cotton from which to make their own clothes. Varro, typically, had some to spare, and it was natural enough for him to use it to refurbish the shoulder bag in which he kept his belongings, casually enlarging it as he did so. There was not much more that he could do.

  He was worried about his feet. Slaves went barefoot, so his soles had thickened, but five years in a household, years spent mainly at a saddler’s bench, are no preparation for days of desert marching. Of course it would have been easy for him to make his own sandals, with all the materials to hand at his workbench, but on his first day at work the harness master had told him about a predecessor who had been found doing exactly that, and what had been done to the man before he died. Varro had thought it an exaggeration. Then, not now. His friends had died not only to satisfy Prince Fo’s notion of justice but also his taste in entertainment. It wasn’t even worth the risk of filching leather. All he dared take from work on his last day at the bench was a few small tools, needles and fine cord. That and his supply of food and an empty waterskin were already dangerous enough.

  There was a rota of the younger men told off to attend the slave-master in his room each night, but the man wasn’t picky—almost anyone with flesh on his arse would do. In fact, the offer to take over this chore was one of the regular items gambled at knucklebones, which was how Varro had managed to avoid it so far. On his chosen night he made the offer and then deliberately lost his bet, so nightfall found him scratching at the slave-master’s door.

  “Hum, Varro? Thought it was Gabrin coming. Dice fall badly for you this time?”

  Varro hung his head as if in shame.

  “No, sir. Gabrin has the runs,” he muttered.

  “Greedy sod, if it’s true. Let’s take a look at you, man. Hold your head up. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  As an apprentice Varro had learnt to use a knife for other things than trimming leather. He let the slave-master chuck him under the chin and drove his knife in beneath the raised arm. The slave-master choked and collapsed to the floor. Now there was no turning back.

  In addition to the all-round lashings for his escape, there would now be at least one death, after torture. Varro wiped his finger along the blade and used the blood to scrawl the name “Karan” on the floor by the slave-master’s outstretched hand, then smeared more blood onto the man’s forefinger. He took the keys from the man’s belt, and explored the room for anything he could use. The shoes were all too small, but the open-toed sandals, though ornate and shoddy, were better than nothing. He took three pairs, a cloak to cover his slave garments, and a purse of coins. No doubt there was more hidden in the room, but he hadn’t time to search. Finally he filled his waterskin at the pitcher and drank as much as he could stomach. The room was at the entrance to the slave quarters, so he could let himself straight out.

  From the roof he had studied the movements of the household watch—his fellow slaves, but no less a danger for that. He moved through shadows, avoiding them, to the back of the stables, where the bedding was still being cleared out into the dung-carts, nocturnal work because in the cooler air the odours would be less offensive to his lordship’s nostrils. At a point when all the barrows were indoors being loaded he gathered a bundle of loose straw under his arm, and waited, and when the work seemed almost done took a similar chance to climb up, tuck himself down between the main heap and the side panel of the cart, and spread the straw over himself. The last few barrowloads were pitchforked aboard, adding to his concealment. The oxen started to heave the cart away on the slow journey to one of his Lordship’s estates.

  These lay northeasterly of the city, so as soon as the cart was well clear of the gates Varro wriggled to the back, slipped over the tailboard, dropped, and darted to the side of the road. He lay there, panting, until the wheels were out of earshot, then rose and headed south, steering by the stars. Prince Fo was endlessly fussing with his harness, and often took a saddler with him on his hunting trips along the edge of the desert, if only to have someone to beat when his saddle chafed, so Varro had a good idea of where he was.

  Daybreak found him well into the desert, where no sane man travels much after sunrise, but he trudged on for as long as he could bear to, and then found a rock on a north-facing slope with a thin strip of shade from which he could watch back the way he had come. By now the slave-master’s sandals were falling apart. It was difficult to sleep for anxiety, heat, thirst and discomfort, so he spent part of the day taking the ruined sandals apart and using the pieces to adjust and reinforce the next pair.

  He walked all that night, hurrying, because even with the stars to guide him and the memorised list of landmarks from the manual, he knew he might finish the stage only in the rough vicinity of the water hole, and then would need daylight to find it. As dawn broke he came to three separate sets of animal tracks converging in the same direction. He walked on until he came to harder ground and turned aside in the direction that the animal prints had taken, along a line that should intersect with them. Ten minutes later he was kneeling by a scummy pool in a hollow.

  First he poured a libation to Mercury, then drank sparingly and filled his waterskin. He drank again, twice, before heading off, still aside from his route and still on hard ground, and didn’t start searching for shade until he was well clear of the pool.

  This time he slept well. In the late afternoon he woke and returned to the pool, where he tied a large loop with a slipknot into his toughest cord, laid it out along the water’s edge, and led the loose end up to the rim of the hollow, and hid. In the evening small animals came to the pool to drink, but they were very quick and wary, and seemed able to smell where he had been. They sniffed around the noose and went elsewhere.

  He had two long nights’ journey to the next water, so couldn’t afford to watch too long. In the late dusk he filled his skin with what he could carry, and his stomach also, and set out. By next morning his sandals were again in ruins, so he spent some of the day cobbling a last pair together, and set out again in the dusk. His food was by now almost gone, so while he trudged on he tried to devise more effective animal traps in his mind.

  This place, he hoped, would be easier to find. There was a sort of notch in a range of hills, the outlines clearly described. His way led through the notch, on the left flank of which water oozed down a rock. It turned out to be exactly so. He praised Mercury, and poured a second libation for the soul of the long-dead traveller who had written the manual. The water was sweet and clean, but the only sign that any animals came there was a scattering of bird droppings. He saw no nests and heard no cries. Nevertheless he tried laying out nooses for them, but none came all day.

  He moved on that evening, knowing that if he didn’t find food at the next water place, or sooner—it was another two nights’ journey—he wasn’t going to make it through the desert. It amused his sardonic turn of mind to think that this was the supposedly demon-guarded pool. It had been made by men, ages before, and had what was apparently a small temple beside it. The demon might be the statue of some forgotten god. Perhaps the priests who had served it had demanded a human sacrifice, which would help to explain the sudden little absurdity in the otherwise reasonable and accurate route details. Well, if it didn’t prov
ide him with something to eat, he thought, the demon would get its payment of a life.

  He reached the water on the verge of delirium. By the second midnight his shoes had fallen apart. His feet were already blistered, and now slowed him to a hobble. He was weak for lack of food. If the last section of his route hadn’t lain along a valley, delaying the apparent sunrise, he would never have made it. Even so, by the time he found the place the landscape was wavering before his eyes, what had begun as a plea to Mercury would end up in fragments of nursery rhyme, and the pitiless sun had become one enduring blow against his flank and shoulder, to send him reeling, then lie among the rocks, and die.

  The valley floor dipped suddenly. He stood at the rim of a shallow slope and gazed down. There was the pool, a stone-rimmed circle with steps leading to the water. Beside it, exactly as described, stood a little roofless temple, a flagged paving from which rose a dozen squat, barbaric pillars. No demon, of course, but, confirming his conjecture, the headless image of some large winged quadruped—ludicrous anatomy—that had fallen opposite the steps, lay between the temple and the pool.

  Cautious as ever, despite his desperate need, he crawled down the slope rather than risk a fall, and on down the steps to drink. The lowest steps were in the shade, so having drunk as much as was safe, and poured his libation, he turned and sat with his bleeding feet in the water. From down here he could see nothing but the excellent masonry of the wall, vast blocks fitted so well that there was nowhere he could have driven a knife between them. Above that the unornamented rim of the pool. Above that the intense harsh blueness of the sky. And, between the rim and the sky, a single large eye, watching him.