far too shy to discuss it with Resbit.
Sometimes, snuggling down in the warmth of her bed, she felt infinitely contented, thinking herself, for a moment, all-nourishing earth mother, fulfilled by producing, bringing forth, nourishing and mothering.
However, even though her rapport with her child was steadily developing, these earth mother moods did not last. Children were just too much hard work for anyone to be starry-eyed about them for long.
Fortunately the Melski females, appreciating that help might be welcome, and doubtless curious about the raising of human babies, came in and helped out with the household tasks. Yen Olass could not imagine how women coped when they had a newborn baby plus one or more young children plus a house to run and a man to feed, and clothes to make and shopping to do, and maybe an aged parent to look after as well.
The weather closed in. Forced to stay home and look after Monogail, Yen Olass was not free to go on long tramps through the winter forest. She found herself increasingly trapped inside House Two. It was dark; the fire smoked; the wind discovered chinks in their amateurish walls, and came whistling in. The fire smoked; the one room filled with smoke and the smells of cooking and damp mildewed clothing. Two women, two babies and a pig: at times, when there were two voices crying, two shouting and one squealing, it was utter chaos. Yen Olass felt trapped.
Though at times she felt she really loved Monogail, at other times she wished the steel flower had given her a pig instead – a pig already cooked, with an apple in its mouth. Then at least everyone would have got one good meal out there in the wilderness of the Valley of Forgotten Dreams.
More and more, she appreciated the presence of the Melski. They were great talkers, when they loosened up. From perfecting her command of Galish, Yen Olass went on to learn the language of the Melski, a complicated tongue with seven different levels of formality and eighty-three variations of the word 'you'. Yen Olass had an acute, disciplined brain, a lifetime of language-learning behind her, a desire to communicate, and long dark hours in which she could revise her lessons. She made good progress.
Resbit, on the other hand, made no effort to learn the native language of the Melski. Speaking Estral and the Galish Trading Tongue, she thought of herself as highly cultivated already. In many ways, Resbit thought of the Melski as animals. Instead of studying, Resbit spent hours talking to the babies. She loved them without reservation. She was in her element. Love with Yen Olass had been a game: this was life.
Yen Olass, unable to share this enthusiasm, resigned herself to captivity, and waited for the spring.
Working between spells of bad weather, the Melski had finished the trading post by the time spring came. It stood on the lakeside half a league to the south of House One: a stockaded establishment complete with lodging house, warehouse, a corral for any animals that travellers brought with them, and a wharf leading out into the lake. Yen Olass and Resbit were suitably impressed.
'For people who never work with wood,' said Yen Olass, 'you've done very well.’
'What do you think our rafts are made of?' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg.
He was, to say the least, offended. Yen Olass apologized, but it was a whole day before relations between them were back to normal. Yen Olass understood this as proof that the Melski accepted her as one of their own. She was no longer an outsider, for whom excuses can be made; she was one of the people, and should know better than to condescend to a full-grown Melski male.
That spring, Yen Olass was free to roam the forests again, with Monogail slung papoose-style on her back. When it was warm enough to venture into the water, the Melski taught the women how to find shellfish beds where they could dive for fresh-water clams. They refurbished their old traps, and made new ones, kept a lookout for any deer unwary enough to venture near House Two, and fished. Birds mated and nested; Resbit and Yen Olass stole eggs for their babies.
Yen Olass found her spirits revived as the weather warmed. Her child was more lovable when she was squad - dling on the beach instead of lying in a dark smoke-filled room bawling her eyes out. Yen Olass began to make plans for her. Monogail would be a translator, and a trader. She would raise scores of pigs and teach slaves how to hunt with them. She would hold the truffle-trading monopoly for all of Penvash…
Yen Olass did not speak of these plans, but Resbit boasted shamelessly about what her son would do when he grew up.
'Branador's going to be a hero,' she said, teasing his little 317
thing. 'With this sword, among others. Maybe he'll marry Monogail. Would you like that, Yen Olass? You can be his mother-in-law.’
'He'll have to be tough to stand up to me,' said Yen Olass.
Resbit smiled fondly.
T mean it,' said Yen Olass, and she did.
No man was going to bully her daughter, or turn her into a household slave. She was certain of that.
Toward the end of spring, the Melski told the women that four travellers had passed through Estar earlier in the year – the Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst and companions named Blackwood, Miphon and Ohio, who were, respectively, a woodsman, a wizard and a pirate. They had come from Trest, and were heading south, hunting Elkor Alish, who was said to have command of a world-destroying power known as the death-stone.
The rest of the story was fragmentary and confused. There had been a battle between soldiers and Melski in a valley far to the east of Trest; a fight against an evil wizard; a journey down an underground river; a mutiny; an epic struggle with a dragon; treachery and murder; a storm at sea; a battle with the Collosnon navy. Somewhere in all this hero-play, Morgan Hearst had lost a hand. Yen Olass thought it served him right: if he hadn't gone swaggering through the world cutting people's heads off, he would never have come to grief. She still remembered his outburst when he had come to parley with the siege forces outside Castle Vaunting:
'Elkor Alish has said nothing about his whore!’
Resbit, who had never been told of these words, was thrilled to learn that Elkor Alish was still alive. And maybe on the way to becoming a world-conqueror. The more distant he grew in her life and memories, the more she idealized him. By now she believed that their commercial fornications had been True Love; that Elkor thought of her always; that when he ruled the world, he would send agents north and south, east and west, in search of her.
Yen Olass, long-time observer of the cynical sexual politics of an imperial oity, could only wonder at this naivety. Though Yen Olass had never entirely lost the ability to play like a child, there was nothing childish about her appreciation of power, sex and the manipulation of one human being by another. But she did not try to disillusion Resbit. She doubted that they would ever again hear of Elkor Alish, or for that matter any other Rovac warrior.
But in the autumn came the news that Elkor Alish, after many battles, conquests and subsequent defeats, was in Estar with an army of Rovac warriors, seeking to hold it against vaguely defined monsters from the south, known as the Swarms. Then winter cut off further news; when spring came, they learnt that Elkor Alish was dead, killed in a fight with Morgan Hearst, who now ruled Estar, sharing his power and responsibilities with the woodsman Blackwood and the wizard Miphon.
Hearing of Elkor's death, Resbit wept, and for a week could not be comforted. But Yen Olass, while displaying her sympathies, was secretly glad that this man-nonsense was at an end: and that there was no chance of the hero of Resbit's daydreams stealing her away to some distant palace of opal and amethyst, there to live out her days as a helpless prisoner of lust.
Intermittently, more news came from Estar. For a while, Estar seemed to flourish. Then Resbit and Yen Olass heard news of a three-way power struggle between its rulers, Blackwood, Miphon and Hearst. Rumour came to them saying Blackwood and Miphon, making an alliance, had removed themselves and their followers to Sung, in the Ravlish Lands, taking with them certain implements of power.
When intelligence next reached Lake Armansis, the two women learnt that Morgan Hearst was now undisputed ruler of Estar, a Rovac army supporting his rule.
