Part Four
Chapter 36
THE TOLL
The sun rose too early for Bisuree the next morning.
It brought pain, anguish, and the mournful task of counting, identifying, and putting to rest, the dead. It was a daunting undertaking. Fully one out of every hand of Eatopygiastees had died.
Usunee and Inabee themselves oversaw and directed the effort. They had arisen early, unable to sleep, both consumed by remorse and guilt. Usunee blamed himself for having Igilvee brought to Bisuree, for having blatantly ignored his own premonitions of disaster, and, by doing so, almost wilfully inviting disaster to occur. Inabee tearfully regretted his ill-conceived order to destroy the Orsnumquammee. He shook his head in disbelief at his own stupidity: by definition, an Orsnumquammee is indestructible. In a rare show of agreement and conciliation, the two leaders decided to leave their posts voluntarily, taking demotions of an as-yet undecided magnitude, as soon as the dead were properly honored and dispatched. They knew of no more telling sacrifice they could make to show their contrition, and the populace at large accepted their resignations with regret, but also with understanding.
Monwyrt slept in the open air outside Aterquee's hut. No one dared to gainsay him now, and he had refused to enter it last night. He did not sleep easily. His conscience was tormenting him. It strove against all his instincts to tell him what he should have done, but the only alternative that even his nagging conscience could produce was for him to have allowed himself to be hacked to shreds.
It was a hollow argument. But on the other side, Monwyrt could not justify the slaughter to himself in any way. He was alive! he thought, and he would be free, and the Eatopygiastees would learn (he hoped) how to disguise their thoughts. But the image of the cold Eatopygiastees piled where they had fallen like so much offal would not leave him. The arguments in his favor all seemed hollow, too.
Aterquee rather timidly emerged from his hut in mid-morning; afraid that Igilvee might have escaped in the night, and equally afraid that he might not have. He found Monwyrt in his garden, sitting against the stout bole of an ilixfee, head in hands.
Aterquee's head pounded, raced, whirled, screamed in the aftermath of the Conclave. He dreaded submitting to Igilvee's instruction besides, but he dared not admit his dread.
Timorously, he approached Monwyrt. "Ercusstee. I am ready, Igilvee."
Monwyrt looked up tiredly. "Eh?"
"I am ready to be relieved of The Curse," Aterquee declared, taking a deep breath to steady his voice. He added venturingly, "Will it be painful?"
"Painful?" Monwyrt considered that a moment. He tried to remember Cnawaneall's instruction back in the Haunted Lands. "No, it shouldn't be painful. It wasn't for me."
This last remark was puzzling to Aterquee, but he was not in the mood to worry about it. "Thank the Orsnum - Good! I only ask because I am not sure I could tolerate much pain this morning. My head is feeling the effects of the Conclave."
"Oh? How is that?"
"Ercusstee. It hurts considerably."
Monwyrt weighed this. It sounded remarkably like the aftermath of a saelig night of drinking blowanslaep cider. That comparison fit with the previous night's behavior of the Eatopygiastees to a nice precision, he thought. Set in those terms, he could commiserate with Aterquee's condition. "There is no hurry," he said compassionately. "Would you prefer to wait until the next day?"
"Thank you! Icsee, I would immeasurably prefer that!" Aterquee breathed a huge sigh of relief.
"You are quite welcome," Monwyrt replied silently.
Aterquee nodded his acceptance of the pleasantry, then stared in shock. He had not realized that 'Igilvee' really did share The Curse. For the first time he felt on an instinctive level that The Curse could really be lifted, that it was truly possible. He became excited and suddenly impatient. "You, you spoke to me just now, didn't you?" he asked breathlessly.
"Icsee, Aterquee, I did."
"You did it again! Oh, my! This is wonderful! This is wonderful! But, say!" his brow clouded suddenly. "How is it that you suffer The Curse, and at the same time, don't suffer The Curse?"
"That," said Monwyrt emphatically, "is exactly what I propose to teach you how to do. You will be able to use The Curse at will. I presume it will eventually cease to be known as a curse altogether, although that of course will be up to you to decide. Let me know when your head pain is relieved enough to begin, and I will instruct you. I don't know how long it may take: I hope not too long."
"Curse my head pain! Forget waiting until the next day!" Aterquee demanded energetically. "Let's begin now! This moment! Here! - if that is all right with you, Igilvee."
Monwyrt thought a moment. "No," he said finally, to Aterquee's initial disappointment, "not here." He looked around. "There," he said, pointing to a hill behind Bisuree, "what is up there?"
Aterquee looked. "There? Why, nothing that I know of. Foliage, of course. Some big stones. Why?"
"Can you see Bisuree from there?"
"I haven't been up there since I was a young omofinishee," Aterquee commented. "You may be able to see parts of Bisuree through the growth. I'm not sure."
"That will be fine. We will begin our lessons upon that hill," decided Monwyrt. "All right?"
"Icsee, I guess so. Just the inabee of us?"
"Just you and me. Let's go."
Aterquee swallowed heavily. "All right! Let's go. Shall I call for an extra iscelervee?"
"Thank you, no," Monwyrt said. "I'll enjoy the run."
"Run?"
Two days later, Aterquee strode into Monwyrt's little camp on the hill shortly after dawn.
"Good morning!" Monwyrt greeted him brightly. "How go the burnings?"
"It works! It works!" Aterquee burst out. He was in no mood for small talk about affairs in Bisuree. He was excited, and eager to tell his master about the experiments in thought-masking he had been performing on his cohorts. He had not arisen at dawn to ride up the hill and talk about funerals.
"I had an interview with Inaquee last evening," he said breathlessly, dismounting, handing Monwyrt his newly filled water-bladder almost as an afterthought, "and all through it, I complimented her shamelessly in my dominant thoughts. Oh, but I was charming! At the same time - Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" he exploded into loud, merry laughter at the recollection, "at the same time, I vilified her - absolutely destroyed her - in my recessive thoughts. I compared her unfavorably to every disgusting, mindless, malodorant, crawling thing imaginable! I called her every insulting thing I knew - and I know a few! I mentally had her ravaged by - Ha! Ha! - ravaged by - Ha! Ha! Ha! - just a moment! By - Ha! Ha! Oh, my! excuse me - by iscelervees! Iscelervees! - can you imagine? All the time, we spoke verbally of the funeral arrangements. I had to struggle not to change my expression, believe me. But she - oh, Igilvee - as our interview went on, she smiled more and more, she constantly shifted in her seat, she blushed, she even reached over and touched my hand! She has never done that before! It was exhilarating - the experiment, I mean. It really works!"
"I told you it would," Monwyrt said calmly. "But even now, are you sure? Perhaps Inaquee, er, liked those things you thought recessively about her."
Aterquee's face fell. "Never! Do you think? No - she - no! - would - what - oh, really: iscelervees? You can't be serious!" he spluttered, completely nonplussed by the suggestion.
Monwyrt smiled. "On the contrary, I can be. You must learn to be more careful. You played a dangerous game with Inaquee at this stage of your learning. It is much safer to think dominantly of a completely neutral subject. There is much less possibility of getting confused."
Monwyrt smiled at his own speech. He had fallen onto the role of master with surprising ease, he realized: he was talking like he had taught thought-masking all his life, not like he barely knew what he was doing, which was much closer to the truth.
He looked at his eager student, sulking now following his chastisement. Aterquee, Monwyrt thought with amazement, was probably at least twice his age. Yet here he sat, a puling pupil.
"A neutral subject?" Aterquee queried. "Such as what?"
Monwyrt began thinking primarily about beazhat.
"Espavees! So that is why we thought we heard espavees on the dais!" exclaimed Aterquee.
"That is why. When you learn how to do that, we can practice the next step together."
"The next step?"
"The next and final step: thinking about nothing."
Aterquee laughed. "That doesn't sound hard at all! Thinking about nothing!"
Monwyrt frowned. "You're right," he said. "It doesn't sound hard." He stirred the coals covering some weodthufs he had been delighted to find nearby. "Come, let us begin." The two of them were soon lost in concentration.
Aterquee arose even earlier the next morning. He could hardly sleep. He had returned to Bisuree the previous afternoon and tried "thought-masking" with everyone he had met. Of course, they all knew that he was the one chosen to learn it first, and some jealously tried to pretend they could still hear his thoughts, but it was soon obvious they could not. Word traveled through Bisuree that Aterquee had mastered the technique, that The Curse was really to be a thing of the past. Crowds of Eatopygiastees flocked to his door that evening, begging to be taught; he turned them away disappointed, explaining that his training was not yet complete. Inatree (soon to become Usunee!) proclaimed that all Eatopygiastees would be taught "thought-masking" strictly in order of rank, a decision many had expected. And every time Aterquee had used it, it had been an unqualified success. He urged his iscelervee up the hill as fast as it could go.
Luckily, Igilvee had forgotten to give him its water-sack, and he didn't have to go down to the river first. He was glad of that: it was that much less delay. He was burning to tell Igilvee of the furor caused in Bisuree by "thought-masking," and of his successes. He charged into the small camp clearing, practically jumped off of his ofaexedee, rollicked excitedly to the campfire - and came to an abrupt halt. The fire was cold, nothing but muddy ashes. The pack and water-bag were nowhere to be seen.
Igilvee was gone.
The forest! The forest! Monwyrt ran through the foliage, ran around the strange, black stones, ran beneath the tall ilixfees, down hillsides, along gullies, through valleys. He ran all day, and all the next day, and the next. The foothills behind Bisuree were just the beginning of an extensive range of smooth black mountains, and the lure of them on an expatriot Traeppedelferean hunter proved irresistable. He luxuriated in the shade, he jumped with nostalgic glee upon the smooth stones, he rolled bodily into the chill streams he crossed. The scents drove him wild, the sound of treowdwellans at dusk made him tremble with his old sense of belonging. He couldn't get enough of the forest. He shouted with unrestrained delerium when he found some foliage, tuber, or undergrowth that he recognized: the discovery of weodthuf had absolutely driven him to ecstacy. It seemed like seasons since he had been alone, really alone, and he wondered incredulously how he had survived as long as he did amongst the Eatopygiastees. (It had only been a matter of one-and-a-half hand-days.) What joy! what pure unadulterated pleasure freedom was! he thought to himself as he ran.
But he did not run aimlessly. He could see, from time to time, from hilltops and crags he would climb for the purpose, that the foothills, and the mountains, curved around Bisuree and declined, slowly, down to the river. He had not forgotten, he could not forget, the dewdrop. But if he had a choice between running free through the forest and following a flat riverbank, he would choose the forest every time. He would, undoubtedly, have to march along a shoam-clogged riverbank enough in the coming days, he figured. All the more reason to stick to the forest.
This forest was a curious mixture of foliage and beasts; some from the mountains, and some from the fens. At nights, he listened carefully to the odd combinations of skreeks and wails. The scents of the two were combined, too. For some time, the scent of this forest had puzzled him - there was something in the air he could not quite identify. But finally, he remembered. It was the arid, biting smell he had noticed on the river crossing into Bisuree. That smell seemed to be everywhere. While the normal scents of the forest changed depending on whether he was on a hilltop or in a valley, near a waterway or waist-deep in undergrowth, that faint, mysterious scent could be picked up every time he licked the roof of his mouth. It was pervasive and unmistakable.
At last he came to the last line of low hills, not far from the slope down to the river. From a knoll which reminded him greatly of the one he had climbed on the other side of the mountains, he could look down across the vast round lowlands which were the fens. On the one hand, toward the setting sun, was Bisuree, hidden now in the distance. He could follow the wide arc of the mountains, rising up behind Bisuree, swinging away beyond the fens, slightly sinking into the horizon.
At the furthest point away from him directly across the fens, Monwyrt thought he caught a flash of reflected sunlight. Um! there it was again! He squinted to try to focus on it, and noticed a white hazy cloud floating just below the glint of light. That was the mists, he thought to himself: the light must be the reflection of the falls, high up in the mountain pass. He shivered at the thought that he had fallen from above the cloud, and was reminded again of the little batohram. Where had it come from? He wished he had it now.
He looked down at the great fens. They were not endless, he could see very easily now, but he could understand how it had seemed that way to him when he was lost in them. The mersc stretched on and on, filling the whole low area of the protected vale.
Slowly, gradually, the water of the falls made its way through uncounted lazy bogs and channels toward the river below him, draining into it from tributary streams and trickles all along its length. Monwyrt noted that the river seemed much wider below him than it had been at Bisuree. Downstream, he guessed, it would be wider yet.
The river was the dividing line, seemingly, between mountain and mersc. It followed the line of hills faithfully in a great curve, a slow half-circle, around the fens; from the falls far before him, past Bisuree on his one hand, past the low hills directly below him, and on toward the mountains enclosing the great vale from the other hand.
He couldn't see, as yet, where the river exited this huge bowl. No matter. He would find it.
A gentle evening breeze stirred, and distracted him from his tour of the vale. The top of the knoll was relatively bare, with no large foliage, which afforded him an uninterrupted view of the panorama, and also left him exposed to the breeze. It was rich and cool. It was also heavy with that strange scent, and carried with it the low, rolling whisper he had noted in Bisuree. Here, it was much louder; he realized that he had been hearing it constantly for some days now, and had simply not attended to it. Suddenly, it was coming from an identifiable direction, and he turned his face away from the fens, into the wind, to concentrate on it.
For the first time, he felt that the sound and the scent must come from the same source. He lifted his head and licked the roof of his mouth. There was an almost pleasant savor to the scent, he decided, although it was far from being sweet.
The sound was pleasant, too, in a primitive sort of way. It was powerful. It was raw. It was alluring and frightening at the same time. Monwyrt was suddenly tempted to run toward it, overmastered with curiosity, to find out what it was. He scanned the hills and low mountains before him in the direction of the breeze, but could learn nothing. Sighing, he finally turned and began to walk down the slope. He would camp near the river that night.
Some time later, Monwyrt stirred the coals of his fire around some weodthufs he was baking, and gnawed a strip of dried ruhhnecca. The sun was almost down to the tops of the mountains beyond Bisuree, and the evening air was cool. He stared contentedly at the little dancing flames, and listened to the creatures compete for his ear. With a smile, he recognized one creature's voice in particular.
"Oedusfee! I tell you, Igilvee is around here, somewhere! If you would be so kind as to follow me, I will introduce you. Come on, orpensnucestee!"
"I have no desire to be introduced to death! Please, good superior, it is not that I doubt your veracity. It's only that I hate your odee cipiacee guts! If you would follow my inclinations, we would depart, and leave well enough alone. Immediately."
"Adospee! I knew it as soon as I smelled that smoke! Move your tail!"
"Lick mine!"
"In your dreams!"
"In my nightmares!"
Monwyrt crept as silently as only a Traeppedelfere hunter could toward the arguing omofinishees, and succeeded in surprising them with his sudden appearance. "Binatree!" he cried. "I thought I knew your voices!"
"Ercusstee! Oh, Igilvee!" Binatree jumped. "There you are! I knew you were nearby."
"Please don't kill me please don't kill me please don't kill me please don't kill me!" ranted the other, who had prostrated himself face-down on the ground at Monwyrt's feet.
"He even looks like an ermisvee! Igilvee," said Binatree contemptuously, "meet Trinatree, my new colleague."
"Ina - gulp! - binaniltrinaquinatrinatrinatree, if yuh - yuh - you please, Orsnumquammee," Trinatree stammered. "Please don't kill me!"
"Trinatree is much simpler, don't you think?" Monwyrt asked Binatree lightly.
"Truer words were never spoken. Much," he agreed.
"Rise, Trinatree," said Monwyrt gently. "I will not harm you as long as you make no attack upon me."
"Right! Thank you Igilvee thank you Igilvee thank," Trinatree struggled to his feet, "you, Igilvee!"
"Would you like to come sit beside my fire?" Monwyrt asked politely.
"Icsee, very much!"
"No, thank you, we can't accept."
Monwyrt bent down and looked the reluctant Trinatree in the eye. "Come to my camp, please."
"Of course!" replied a trembling Trinatree. "What could I have been thinking?"
The three of them made their way to Monwyrt's fire, the outriders leading their steeds. They sat comfortably and spoke of Bisuree, having just left it the day before last. The new Usunee and Inabee had been named. The old ones had taken demotions further down than anyone had dreamed they would (though still far above the omofinishees), and there were two new members of the First Hand. The sudden diminishing of the population had played havoc with the chain of command, and the subsequent renaming promised to be a nightmarish problem. But the new Usunee had decided that every Eatopygiastee would receive her or his new rank upon completing the training in thought-masking. That decision stretched the process out over a more manageable period of time, and the Eatopygiastees, however eager they were to learn and advance, had to concede its wisdom.
"When will you get your turn to learn thought-masking?" Monwyrt asked them. "You obviously have not learned it yet."
"We don't know yet," answered Binatree sourly. "We have rather long names. It will be quite a while."
"Would next morning do?" Monwyrt asked, winking.
Trinatree brightened instantly. "Outstanding idea! Would you teach us, really?"
"Of course."
Binatree frowned. "I'm not sure that would be a good idea, Trinatree," he said. "We might upset the order. I would not like to anger a new Usunee."
"He need not know," suggested Monwyrt conspiratorially. "Thought-masking is voluntary, you know - simply don't use it when you are in Bisuree, until your turn comes."
"Voluntary! No, I didn't know that, Igilvee." Trinatree was decided. "Let's do it!" he said excitedly. "It will make things so much easier! I'll be able to hide my thoughts from you, at least, Inabinaniltrinaquinatrinabinatree, and I won't have to listen to yours, either! Just think, next day, thought-masking! I can't wait! I wish I could fall asleep now, to make it come that much faster!"
"So do I. Marvelous suggestion, Trinatree," Binatree said peevishly. "Go to sleep."
"Um - icsee," said Monwyrt, looking right into Trinatree's eyes again. "Go to sleep. Now."
Binatree watched with startled eyes as Trinatree slumped immediately to a prone position, snoring soundly, and turned to Monwyrt for an explanation. Monwyrt chuckled. "I've never tried that before." Then he sobered instantly, crying, "I should have done that at the Conclave! How easy it would have been! Oh, what have I done?" He clutched his head in dispair.
Binatree was at a loss for something to say. Finally, he muttered what he happened to be thinking. "Igilvee, you killed Unustree."
"I know!" wailed Monwyrt. "I didn't know him at first, and then it was too late! I thought he was going to stab me, but he was trying to cut the cords."
"He was mad," Binatree said. "He lost his head. He could have killed Inaquee, but not you."
"He was valiant, not mad," Monwyrt cried. "Do you realize how many lives he would have saved if he had freed me from that post? I would have run - they would not have caught me."
Binatree tried to comfort him. "Igilvee, you had to do it. They would have killed you."
"I wish, oh, how I wish I would have known then that I could have simply willed them to sleep, not to die!"
"But you didn't know, Igilvee; you didn't know." Binatree sat in silence for a long moment. "But why didn't you know? An Orsnumquammee knows everything!"
"Orsnumquammee?" Monwyrt asked aloud. "I was called that in Bisuree. Why do you call me that? and for that matter, why do you call me Igilvee?"
"Why? It is our name for you. Igilvee, the watcher, Orsnumquammee, you know. One of the returned Effesidees."
Watcher, Monwyrt thought. One of the returned...
"Moc!" he shouted, jumping suddenly to his feet. "You think I am a Waeccelang! That's what an Orsnumquammee is, isn't it? A Waeccelang! Tungebunge! So that's what it was all about." He slowly sat down again in a daze.
"Of course! Icsee, Igilvee," answered Binatree. "Are you telling me that you are not an Orsnumquammee? I can't believe it!" Monwyrt looked at the snoring Trinatree, he thought of the dead Eatopygiastees, he squeezed the strip of dried ruhhnecca in his hand, and he wondered. He wasn't sure of anything any more.
"I don't know," he numbly whispered to Binatree. "Perhaps I am."
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