Then closed his eyes, to make the hallucination go away. When he opened his eyes, the hallucination was still waiting patiently.
'Are you real?' said Togura.
He meant the words to mean what they meant in his native patois: do you truly exist? But the stranger interpreted them to mean what they meant in mainstream Galish, which was, literally, 'Is your presence sincere?' and implied 'Do you really wish to make a bargain?'
'Boy, I've said nothing of trade,' said the stranger.
'Neither have I,' said Togura.
'Where is your keeper, boy?'
'What do you mean by that?' said Togura, speaking slowly, and with some difficulty; he had fallen out of the habit of language.
'Have you no keeper, then?'
'What would I need a keeper for? Do you think I'm simple or something?'
'If you're not simple, then how else do you explain yourself?'
'I don't explain myself at all to nameless earth-walkers,' said Togura. 'Name yourself.'
'My name is Jotun,' said the man, meaning 'dwarf.'
'That's a strange name for a fellow of your height,' said Togura, for the man was the same size as he was.
'Truth to tell, I guard my name amidst strangers. But whatever you are or aren't, you look honest enough to me. So I'll give you my true name, which is Soy Doja. I'm a healer by trade; I'm on this coast to look for the plant they call Moonbeam. Very rare. Do you know it?'
'No,' said Togura, who had never heard of it. He felt it was now time to name himself, but, since the other had lied about his name – and was, incidentally, still lying – Togura decided not to trust him with the truth. 'I'm Parax Gemenis myself,' said Togura. 'I'm a fisherman from many leagues along the coast. There's a feud in my village which threatens my life, which is why I'm here.'
After telling each other a great many more elaborate lies, and exchanging a considerable amount of deliberate and accidental misinformation, they did a little trading. Togura sold the traveller some sun-dried fish, accepting in payment a small coin which bore the head of Skan Askander.
The traveller stayed the night in Togura's cave. He had a tinder box, so they had a fire; when the traveller moved on the next day, Togura kept the fire burning. He would need it in the winter.
Now that he had fire, he should have been happier still, but he was not. He was restless all day. Brooding. That evening, he sat by the fire, turning the coin over in his fingers. Part of the new coinage minted by the Suets, it brought back memories of the wedding feast in Keep. Of the cakes baked in the shape of coins. And of Slerma, who must surely be dead by now.
Overwhelmed by homesickness, he remembered, with an intolerable sense of longing, the pleasures of his former life. Drinking, jokes and conversation. Real shoes. Horses which would carry you over the league-roads and eat out of your hand. Hot meals cooked by women. Women themselves, their eyes alive with temptation, their breasts hot and swollen beneath their clothes, their reception waiting. Real blankets. The welcome of friends. Lying in bed in the morning, dozing. Spending days being utterly idle. Eating real bread. Shutting out the wind at night. Cock fighting.
Togura knew what he had to do. He had to return home. He would be reconciled with his father. He would beg his father's forgiveness, and would become a true brother to Cromarty. They would live together happily ever after.
Enthused, animated and excited, he could barely sleep. He rose at first light, tied his bow, spears and arrows into a bundle he could carry over one shoulder, ate the little bit of dried food he had left after dealing with the traveller, knotted the traveller's coin in a bit of bark then knotted the bark to his waist and was ready to go.
'Goodbye cave,' he said. 'Goodbye rocks. Goodbye tower.'
He spent some time sentimentalising in this manner, then turned his back on the place and trudged along the coast, heading in the direction his itinerant stranger had come from.
He was making for D'Waith.
Chapter 16
The weather broke up; Togura Poulaan travelled through storm, wind and rain, enduring the worst which summer could bring. Once, the night caught him out in the open; he huddled in the lee of the largest rock he could find, and shivered there, sleepless, until dawn. Once he slept in a sea cave, and was washed out of it by the high tide. The next evening, harried over a hill by an electrical storm, he was close to despair when he surmounted the summit and saw, on a clifftop at the bottom of the hill, a ruinous cottage near an ancient horned cairn.
Togura went bounding down the hill and went burrowing in through the door of the cottage. It was cold inside, with rain dripping through rotting thatch, the wind blowing in through windows now without shutters, and turbulence playing piffero in the chimney. Nevertheless, it was a vast improvement on the world outside, where thunder exploded across the sky, and forked lightning – hot as molten silver and as bright as sunrise – stabbed down through the slashing rain to the laundering sea.
'Hello, house,' said Togura.
'Hello, Togura Poulaan,' said the house – not by means of a voice, for it had none, but by embracing him with a load of rotten thatch.
'Pleased to make your acquaintance,' said Togura, brushing thatch from his hair, neck, eyes and ears; he sneezed, expelling it from his nose.
'Gronnammadammadamyata,' said the thunder, shattering the sky with a blast which shook the cottage, or what was left of it.
'That too,' said Togura, vaguely, not sure what he meant by his own words; he was exhausted, and very close to collapse.
But, in a way, happy. For the cottage helped prove the existence of the world he remembered, which was the world he belonged to. He was approaching civilisation; soon, he would be back in the society of men – and women, too – and his disfellowship would be at an end.
He moved to the driest spot he could find, and very shortly was asleep. And dreaming. Outside, as the thunder slowly blundered away into the distance, and the rain eased, the last of the light subsided to the sea, and was gone. Swift-moving clouds rucked across a sky of absolute darkness. At the foot of the cliff, sullen waves heaped themselves against the rocks of the Ravlish Lands, pounding home with a beat too deep, heavy and protracted for any drum to match it. Togura, accustomed to that sound, did not notice it; the surf did not figure in his dreams.
Instead, Togura Poulaan dreamt of Day Suet. Her breasts winked at him lewdly through holes cut in the dolman which fell weeping to her feet; her eyes and her lips were smiling. She stretched out her arms to him, but he found himself floating in a meditative sea, watching the underwater world. A fish went by, hideously maimed, crabbing through the sea with blood and clear fluids scuppering out of old, old, ulcerated wounds in its flanks.
'Kill it for pity,' said Day.
'We can negotiate,' said Togura.
Then woke, and wondered what he had meant by that. Then, alarmed, wondered who was touching his neck with such a cold, cold bony hand. He looked around, startled, tumbled head over heels like an acrobat, reached the safety of the furthest corner of the cottage, then picked up a heavy stone which he could use as a weapon. His hair, if it had not been so crabbed, knotted and dirty, would have been standing on end.
'Who are you?' hissed Togura, menacing the glimmering skeletal figure which confronted him.
It addressed him in a foreign tongue. Its voice was old and watery. He could see through its pearl-white armour, through the shadowy outlines of its flesh, through the harder white of its bones, and out to the walls of the cottage beyond.
'What are you?' said Togura, attacking the phosphorescent manifestation with questions. 'Where do you come from? What are you saying? How? Why?'
