70: THE COMET AND THE SCALES

Two nights later, after supper, Maia was giving instructions about the money to be sent to Morca. It was a right old lot, too; more than Morca would have seen in her whole life, Maia felt sure of that. Sarget, whom she had consulted (though without mentioning Tharrin), had recommended one of his agents, a steady, middle-aged man who regularly traveled the fifty miles to Thettit-Tonilda with consignments of wine. The journey usually took three to four days or even longer—loaded ox-carts being slower than an unencumbered man on foot—but Sarget thought it feasible enough for his agent to break off from the convoy at Hirdo and visit Lake Serrelind. A day should be quite enough for the business, and he could easily overtake the oxen before they reached Thettit. It was understood, of course, that Maia would make the detour worth his while.

Since Morca (like Maia herself) could more or less read simple words if she put her mind to it (her husband had taught them both as much as he himself knew of the tricky business) Maia had engaged a professional scribe to write a letter to be handed over with the money. When she came down to it, however, she could not find a great deal to say. Assuming that the family had already given Tharrin up for dead, she simply assured Morca that she knew he had died quickly and painlessly (why say more?) and that she herself had paid for his rites. She forgave Morca for what she had done and assured her that she bore no grudge. She sent her love to Kelsi, Nala and Lirrit and her blessing to the baby girl she had never seen. Then, on impulse, she added at the end, "Tharrin told me about my real mother, so now I understand you—and everything—better."

She had just handed over this letter to the man, together with the money, explained to him for the second time how to find Morca's hut and begged him to be sure to bring back word of how the girls were looking, when Ogma came running into the parlor, plainly frightened.

"Oh, miss!" she cried, not only interrupting Maia in mid-sentence but almost throwing herself into her arms as well, "Oh, miss, have you seen it? Oh, Cran, what's to become of us all, what's to—?"

"Ogma!" said Maia sharply. She felt thoroughly put out by the interruption. Ogma, for all her limitations, knew perfectly well the importance of keeping her place in front of visitors and strangers. "Pull yourself together! I don't know what you're on about, but whatever it is, just tell me sensibly."

"In the sky, miss!" whimpered Ogma.

"What?"cried Maia, now really angry. "Have you gone off your head?"

Disconcertingly, Ogma fell on her knees at Maia's feet.

"Oh, Miss Maia, don't be angry! It isn't only me! Everyone's that scared—everyone! I went up on the roof—only I'd forgotten I'd left the clothes there to dry—and there it was! They're all out in the streets—everyone—"

This certainly sounded like trouble of some sort. What could it be—a riot? Bad news from one of the battle-fronts? She listened, but there was nothing to be heard. She turned to the man, shrugged her shoulders and asked him to be so good as to accompany her. Together they went upstairs and then up the flight of outside steps onto the flat roof.

The previous two nights had been, for once in a way, cloudy—at all events to the north and west—but tonight the sky was as clear as usual at midsummer. The sight that met their eyes caused Maia to start back with a cry, clutching at the parapet.

In the northern sky, fairly low though well clear of the horizon, hung a brilliant luminescence. "Star" it could scarcely be called, first because it was far brighter than any star, but secondly because its refulgence had an unde-marcated, gaseous quality, like an incandescent vapor, dimming at the periphery to become a kind of glowing fog as it spread into the surrounding void. From its lower edge tapered a streamer of filmy, powdery light, slightly inclined to the left, giving the whole phenomenon the likeness of a sword poised above the distant Gelt mountains. It appeared perfectly still and (unlike stars, which look like bright studs fixed into the sky and left there), as though invisibly but intentionally displayed by some supernatural agency.

Maia, oblivious of the man beside her, stared at it in dread. After a time (she did not know how long), like someone in a disaster or a wreck vaguely recalling the appointed procedure, she tried to stand unaided and ex-tend her arms in the customary posture of prayer; but her knees gave way and she turned and clung once more to the parapet.

Faintly, in the lower city below, she could discern that the roofs were covered with people. There were all manner of sounds—calls and crying, ululations of prayer, what sounded like some soldiers raggedly singing a marching song—rising together in a cacophonous tumult, like that of a herd of frightened beasts, out of the obscure dimness. Yes, she thought; that was one thing the noises had in common; they all expressed fear. Yet the light itself was calm and silent as a seraph.

At this moment Sarget's man touched her arm.

"Säiyett, you're afraid: I'm afraid, too. This is a portent. Lespa's displeased, and who can tell why? But whatever it may foretell, the star itself won't do anything; nor we shan't alter anything, you and I, by standing here and letting it terrify us. Whatever's going to happen won't hap-pen tonight."

Maia hardly heard him. The terrible thing, she thought, about the enigmatic light was its inescapability.

You could not fly from it, you could not shut it out. If you were to run from Bekla to Zeray, it would still be there above you.

The man spoke again. "Säiyett, I'm just someone who works for U-Sarget, and you're a great lady of the upper city; I know that. But there are times—there are things— well, I've got two married daughters older than you. We're all men and women, säiyett—to Lespa we are. May I advise you?"

She nodded abstractedly.

"You swam the river, säiyett. That lot down there— you're their heroine. Whatever's coming, we can all try to keep our dignity, wouldn't you agree? Set them an example, you know."

Maia was highly suggestible and, as we know, it seldom took her long to make up her mind. "Yes, I would agree," she said, "and all I can say is 'Thank you'—'ceptin' I reckon as your daughters got the best father anyone could have. Ogma!" she called. "Bring me my cloak, please— the one with the embroidered stars. I'm going out!"

It is, on the whole, easier to appear brave when you already have a reputation that way and feel that courage is expected of you. Maia's third soldier was nowhere to be found, but this did not bother her now. Within twenty minutes the Serrelinda, dressed to kill, unveiled and seated in her golden jekzha, was entering the lower city through the Peacock Gate.

There was light enough for her to be recognized; and recognized she was, before she had gone two hundred yards down the Street of the Armourers. A big, brawny man—plainly one of the smiths—broke away from a crowd of his mates and ran across to the jekzha.

"Yes, it is the Serrelinda!" he called back over his shoulder. Then, standing squarely in the way and looking up at her, "What's up, lass? Are you leaving the city, or what?"

"Leaving? Of course I'm not leaving!" she answered.

There were seven or eight of them clustered round her now. "What on earth would I be leaving for?"

Their answers came all at once, like a handful of gravel thrown at her.

"The star—" "Unlucky—" "What's it mean?" "—unlucky—" "Where are you going, then?" "—quarrels among the gods, that's it—" "—we'll have to pay for it—" "What d'you make of it?" "Unlucky—"

"It isn't unlucky!" she cried, raising her two fists. "It isn't! That's where I'm going—" she pointed ahead, down-hill—"to tell them not to be afraid! There's nothing to be afraid of! It isn't bad luck, it's good luck!"

"How d'you know that, eh?" asked the big fellow. "A bit of a girl like you—"

"Ah, and a pretty one an' all," said someone else.

"Because Lespa told me in a dream!" shouted Maia at the top of her voice.

"A dream, eh?" said a red-haired man in a short, sacking smock, who reminded Maia horribly of the Sacred Queen attired for her pleasure. "What's dreams?—just a lot of rubbish—"

"Then I s'pose you reckon it was all rubbish when Lespa told me King Karaat's battle-plan in a dream, do you?" said Maia.

This came out with the greatest conviction. In the mo-ment that she was saying it she believed it herself.

"And I s'pose you'll say next that it wasn't Lespa who brought me safe across the river? D'you want to make her angry, talking like that? I tell you—this star's the sword of Bekla, come to destroy her enemies!"

"Is that the rights of it, säiyett?" asked the big man. "Honest?"

"Of course it is!" answered Maia. "Give me patience! Lespa sends you the best sign for a thousand years, and you stand there wondering whether it's good or bad-—"

It was not only her beauty—that clear and patent sign of the favor of the gods—but her whole manner, her air of joyous confidence in the midst of their anxiety, which they found more convincing than any words.

" I believe her!" shouted an older man. "Well, stands to reason, don't it? If the goddess was going to tell anyone, it'd be the Serrelinda she'd tell. Hasn't she had the goddess's favor all along?—and damned lucky for all of us, too! She's right, the star's good!"

By this time a considerable crowd had gathered round the jekzha, and Brero and his mate were fidgeting uneasily in the shafts.

"Where d'you want to go, then, säiyett?" asked the big smith. "You want to go down the Market and tell the lot of them, is that it?"

"Yes, Baltis, yes!" cried Maia; at which there was a roar of laughter, while someone called out "She even knows his name!" Smiths throughout the empire were generically called Baltis, but evidently this had been a rather luckier shot than that.

They opened up the way for her, calling out "Maia! Maia!" and striding along beside the jekzha as the soldiers pulled it down the hill and into the sandy expanse of the Caravan Market. Here all manner of people—slaves, stall:keepers, shearrias, beggars, merchants, tradesmen and their wives—were gathered in groups, gazing northward at the comet and talking together; some among themselves in low voices, others loudly and excitedly, arguing and gesticulating. A few booths were open and one or two hawkers were also seizing the opportunity for business. In the half-darkness it was difficult to tell how many people might be there altogether, but Maia guessed perhaps a thousand.

"Are you going to the Scales, then, säiyett, or where?" asked Brero over his shoulder.

When Maia, prompted by the words of Sarget's man, had first set out, she had simply had it in mind to go down to the lower city, walk about among the people and show them that at any rate she, a popular public figure, was not afraid. As so often, she had acted on impulse and without any clear idea of what she thought was likely to ensue. In the Street of the Armourers she had answered spontaneously.

Now—or so it appeared—she seemed expected to make some kind of speech. Yet she had no idea what to say.

The plinth of Fleitil's bronze Scales—those same onto which Selperron had climbed to get a look at the Serrelinda—was not infrequently used as a rostrum, both by official and unofficial public speakers.

Possibly the smiths and armourers had not thought of the Scales until Brero spoke, but they did now all right.

" 'Course she is, soldier!" shouted Baltis. "Why don't you pull her up the ramp? Then she needn't even get down."

At one end of the plinth was a long, gently-inclined ramp, and up this (in the absence of any instruction to the contrary from the dazed Maia) the soldiers now drew the jekzha. Seconds later she found herself some six or seven feet above the sandy market-place, looking down on bobbing heads, flaring torches and everywhere faces, young and old, male and female, all unconsciously revealing their common anxiety and disquiet.

They had something else in common, however; they all knew her. She was their Serrelinda, their swimmer, the girl who had raised nine thousand meld in twenty minutes and given the lot (so they supposed) to the Chalcon expedition. She'd come for some purpose or other—that much was plain.

They crowded round the Scales expectantly.

Maia was filled with a dismaying sense of her own lack of confidence and authority. If she had been going to dance, or even just stand up to be admired, she would have felt fine, but now—oh, Cran, it was like a dream!—she'd got herself into a situation where they were all waiting for her, not to dance but to speak. Looking round helplessly she saw yet again, hanging above the rooftops to one side of the dark, slender column of the Tower of the Orphans, the silent presence of the comet. This was what they were all afraid of. So was she, but not in the same way that they were. They feared it, in ignorance, as a threat and a herald of disaster. She feared it as any true, loving worshipper fears and holds in awe the manifest revelation of the deity. Lespa was her guardian, her friend; what hadn't Lespa done for her? But awesome indeed, now, was this hitherto-unimagined majesty and glory of the astral Lady of Dreams.

She could only pray for help. Climbing down from her jekzha, she faced the sword of light and raised her arms. Her prayer was unspoken yet passionate.

"Lespa, bestower of dreams and truth, mistress of or-der—of stars and seasons, moon and menstrual blood— you brought me here from the Tonildan Waste. I've always honored you, dear goddess! Grant to me now that self-abandon and humility which you showed in your sacred union with Shakkam."

There was no time for more. Turning back towards the people below, she stepped forward to the edge of the plinth, hearing in her heart as she did so the cool voice of Occula, "A pretty girl, banzi, starts a yard ahead. What happens after that's up to you, but often the yard can make all the difference."

"Good people," she cried, "I've come to tell you that Lespa's spoken to me in a dream! Just as she spoke to me in Suba and brought me back safe, so now she's sent me here tonight."

She stopped. Her mouth felt dry. She could not see their faces so clearly as she would have liked, but at least no one had interrupted. Yet she could find no more words.

"Her message, säiyett?" called a voice.

That was better; she could at least answer a question. "The star!" she said, pointing. "It means good and not harm to the city! There's no reason to be afraid! That's Lespa's message!"

"Tell us your dream, then, little säiyett," shouted someone else; and there were murmurs of agreement.

"That I mustn't do," she replied, spreading her hands and shaking her head. "If you don't want to believe me, I can't help it. But I've come because Lespa sent me, to say she means us good and not harm. The star's sent for a blessing! That's why I'm not afraid, and nor should you be."

At this there was some cheering, yet somehow it lacked conviction. So distrustful and canny is the human heart that, faced with the unknown, the strange and imponderable, it is always less ready to impute good than ill, and often, even when misgivings have been disproved on clear evidence, will obstinately cling to them, as though reluctant to be deprived of the opportunity to feel hapless and accursed.

"She's right!" shouted Baltis. "Hasn't she been right all along?"

"Right for old Sencho, you mean," called out someone, with a sneering laugh. "You been listening to them big blue eyes and deldas, mate, that's your trouble."

"I been listening to her as swum the river, damn you!" answered Baltis angrily. "Are you telling me—"

Maia began to realize that if the matter were to come to contention, she had already exhausted whatever powers of persuasion she had ever possessed. Circumstances had not allowed her to go about the business as she had originally intended. Still, she had done her best and said what she had to say: it would go round the city. The thing to do now—-if only she could manage it—was to make her departure with dignity.

Standing on the plinth above the bickering roughs—their oaths in her ears, their sweat in her nostrils—she now became aware of some new entry taking place on her left, from Storks Hill on the far side of the market-place. The torchlight was too patchy and intermittent to enable her to make out exactly what was happening, but she could see two files of soldiers—oh, Cran, yes! there must be twenty at least just gone across the lighted front of that stall—and hear authoritative cries of "Back, there; back! Make way!"

What could it be? Something important from Chalcon? Could they have taken Santil-kè-Erketlis prisoner, or perhaps one of his captains? Suddenly the horrible thought came to her that Fornis might have returned. She thought of the cat on the wall. Fornis couldn't miss her, stuck up here on the plinth.

Well, yes, but Fornis could hardly shoot her here, in the full public gaze. (Oh, couldn't she just? whispered an inner voice: that's all you know.)

Whoever it was, they were coming straight towards her, the soldiers in their two files carrying spears and torches alternately. People were scattering left and right. No, it could hardly be anything from Chalcon, for there were no sounds of cheering or acclaim. Nor could it be the Sacred Queen, or there would have been attendant women. Suddenly she recognized the chief priest, dressed in full regalia and carrying his staff of office. No sooner had he crossed the patch of light in which she had glimpsed him than he was immediately followed by the hulking figure of Kembri.

The soldiers—presumably in response to an order, though she had heard none—halted about forty yards from the Scales. She could see them clearly enough now. Her armourers and their disputants had fallen silent and were no longer looking at her.

The Lord General walked slowly and deliberately forward until he was a yard or two below her. There he stood still and looked up without speaking.

Kembri, though lacking the warmth and sociability ever to have become, like his son, a popular figure with the mob, was nevertheless held in respect as a strong, resolute man, a firm ruler and an able general.

To most he represented security and his imposing presence, stern and tenebrous, never failed in its public effect. Yet now, as they stood face to face, the strikingly beautiful girl looking down upon the grim, black-bearded soldier, it seemed as though each possessed—and of this the watchers undoubtedly had an intuitive sense—a counter-balancing, complementary authority; bestowed, as it were, by different (and perhaps emulous) deities. If the Lord General was someone to be reckoned with, then so too, in her way, was the Serrelinda.

Kembri himself must have felt something of this; or perhaps, more prosaically, he merely apprehended, surrounding Maia like a kind of invisible nimbus, the devotion of the people; for though his bearing suggested anything but amity, he still said nothing, his intention being perhaps to agitate Maia into speaking first. She too, however, remained silent, standing outlined against the light of the comet behind her shoulder.

At length the Lord General, speaking so quietly that he was heard by no more than those immediately about them, said, "What are you doing here, Maia?"

"Speaking to the people, my lord."

"About what?"

"About the star."

"Why?"

"My lord, there was that many as seemed frightened and didn't know what to make of it, and I reckoned I might be able to reassure them, like."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not afraid of it, my lord: I know it's for good and not for harm."

"And do you think it's your business to interpret the stars; or the priests'?"

Maia hesitated. "Well, I'm sure I never meant no harm, my lord, not to the priests nor to anyone else. I was just speaking as I felt, like, and I didn't see as it could do any damage."

By now all in the market-place—and to Maia there seemed to be more every minute—had come crowding about the Scales and were listening to as much of the talk as they could catch.

For perhaps a quarter of a minute the Lord General stood silent with as much composure as if he had not been surrounded by an uncertain-minded crowd of a thousand or more. Then he strode across to the end of the ramp and began to climb it, no one saying a word as he did so.

Maia was conscious only that Kembri, while stopping short (probably in his own best interests) of actually having her thrown down or otherwise publicly disgraced, had plainly indicated that she had overstepped the mark. Faced with this situation, all her peasant stubbornness was aroused. She feared the Lord General as the peasant fears the landlord—because he had power. But although she now realized that she might have appeared to be anticipating the professional astrology of the priests, she also felt that in voicing her personal feelings about the comet she had uttered no more than anyone else up and down the city. She'd done no wrong and she didn't see why she should shift. Anyway there was nowhere to shift to, stuck up here.

Arrived on the plinth, however, Kembri simply ignored her, turning to the people below. Having a deep, resonant voice—always a great advantage in a commander—-he hardly needed to raise it, so that he gave no least impression of self-consciousness or of straining to convince the crowd by rhetoric.

"I have been at the temple of Gran, conferring with the chief priest and his experienced astrologers about the meaning of this star. The chief priest is with me now, and we are returning together to the upper city to consult with the Council. Tomorrow the heralds will announce the results of our deliberations." He paused. "To arrive at the truth, reliably and responsibly, is like making a good sword or choosing a good wife. It takes time. That is what your priests and rulers are doing for you now, and I shall leave you in order to go and get on with it."

With this he walked back down the ramp, rejoined the chief priest and immediately set off across the market in the direction of the Street of the Armourers, the tryzatt superior hastily calling his men to order and overtaking him with something of a scramble.

"What about that, then, missy, eh?" called out the man who had spoken of Sencho.

"I didn't come here to argue," answered Maia hotly, "or to disagree with the priests; and you needn't think it. I simply came to say what the goddess told me. I don't stand to get anything out of this at all—"

"Except to make yourself look important," said the man.

"How can she make herself look any more important than what she is now, you damn' fool?" shouted Baltis. "Why don't you shut your blasted mouth?" And thereupon there was something of a concerted movement towards the man on the part of Maia's little group of armourers, which made him hastily follow Baltis's suggestion.

"Anyway, I'm going home now," called out Maia. "Thank you all for listening to me! Baltis!"—and, as he turned and looked up at her—"Catch!"

Normally she wouldn't have risked it, but she was chagrined, provoked and overwrought by what had happened, and in no mood to care a curse. Without giving Baltis a second's pause to grasp what she meant to do, she leaped off the plinth, flinging herself at him where he stood below. It took him entirely by surprise and he was only just in time to catch her. As it was, she hit her forehead rather painfully against his cheekbone and had to save herself by throwing her arms round his neck. Kissing him quickly on both cheeks, she slid to the ground.

"Stars alive, lass, you want to be a bit more careful! You very near—"

She held up her arms, smiling on those about her. "Thank you—all of you! Good-night!" And with this she tripped across to the foot of the ramp and climbed back into her jekzha.

At least there was no doubt about the continuance of her popularity. She was cheered out of the Market, while a dozen young fellows contended with one another to give her soldiers a hand up the Street of the Armourers.

All the same, she couldn't help covertly shedding a few tears, and once back at home wept in earnest; partly from nervous exhaustion, but mainly from resentment. She'd only meant to reassure the people, and that despite the fact that she'd begun by being afraid herself. She'd never meant to go up on the Scales. How in Cran's name was she to know that Kembri and the chief priest would be coming back from the temple? Somehow it had all gone wrong.

However, once she had had a leisurely bath, got into bed and had Ogma bring her a good strong posset mixed with djebbah, she began to feel better, and soon fell asleep without the least trouble.

She was yet to learn exactly how wrong it had gone.