There was a mirror there, blotched and leprous, throwing back a diseased reflection of truth. Medlo found himself staring at the image, remembering the night past. He had told Alan that he was from – where? Zales? Why? Why not Rhees? Rhees. Well, why not Rhees? Because he had not wanted the boy to know he was from Rhees, or anyone to know, or himself to remember.
He looked upon himself with loathing. He was a kernel of hating fury locked inside an iron box, that box in a shut room in a stone house, and that house walled around with unthink and unfeel. A shrubbery of habit shrouded those walls until he, himself, Medlo, forgot there was anything there. Motherhate was there, but he did not want to look at that. He knew well enough what loathsome things were there, not to be looked at, or thought of, or to come into the light of day. Unthink and unfeel were easy among the wagoneers. Drunkenness was easy, too, and the slow death easier than the quick, for it needed no decision. Why then, at this moment, did something of the old Medlo, Rhees scion, prideful and aching, leak out of his bleary eyes to see himself and sicken at what it saw?
He was filthy, and hairy, and he stank like the midden below him. He was caught up in half-drunken melancholy and began to weep, then to vomit, then to curse, then to weep once more. When he had done enough of that, he began to wash himself.
When he woke the young hostler some hours later, he was shaking, but clean. Throughout that day, he spoke often to himself, saying that he must eat and mend clothing and get new boots. Such was the way he spoke that he might have been speaking to Alan, and so Alan thought he did. If Alan thought it odd that Medlo never asked what Alan thought, or what Alan wanted, he did not say so. Instead, almost gratefully, he ate, and mended clothing, and saw to his own boots. Medlo was so concentrated upon his own salvation that he did not note this strangeness.
That first day set the pattern of their life together. Medlo said, to Medlo, what Medlo needed to hear, Alan heard, and attended as though he had been Medlo’s shadow. So, Medlo told himself to take up his jangle and play, and Alan watched, learned, played a little. So Medlo told himself, sternly, not to drink the poisonous wine which the train carried as trade goods, and Alan listened and did not drink. So Medlo grew sad at certain dusk hours when the sun fell through light haze which smelt like the lawns and meadows of Rhees, and Alan grew sad with him, reminded of – what? Medlo never asked.
So they travelled, sometimes as hostlers, sometimes as musicians, sometimes as unnamed supernumeraries hired to swell the apparent fighting strength of caravans. If Medlo had been asked when it was that they became lovers, he would not have known what to say. It was not as though he loved someone else, but only as though he, himself, had been replicated in order to comfort himself. Usually he did not even refer to Alan by name, did not say ‘you,’ said only ‘we.’ ‘We leave for the coast tomorrow,’ or ‘They paid us not too badly for the trip.’
If anyone had known him well enough to do so, that person might have pointed out to Medlo that he felt no onger lonely, no longer violated, no longer alone. And Alan? He went where Medlo went, a companion almost without identity of his own, growing to look more like Medlo with each day in walk and wince and moue and cock of the head, spying little, smiling much.
And yet, Alan said, once, ‘See how the skirts of the sky are stained with wine’ Thereafter, each time that Medlo looked at the evening sky, he thought of the wine-stained skirts but forgot it was Alan who had said it. Alan said once, ‘The skin of a woman is cool, like a forest leaf. The skin of a man is hot, like a desert leaf.’ And Medlo thought of that, forgetting why.
In time they, who had been two shoddy manikins selling themselves for a few coins to caravan masters, became two persons, strong and wiry, taller than average, slim, with air and beard trimmed neatly, clean and alert, wise to the ways of the trail and the town, needing only – themselves. Many thought them brothers. What they thought, what Medlo thought, he himself did not know.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEWSON
Year 1165
It was said in the Lion Courts that he who sat in the Chair of the Chieftains of the People was crowned with wisdom and armed with the strength of hundreds. The Chair was padded with the skins of great spotted cats and surrounded with the tusks of jungle pigs to show the strength that was the Chieftain’s right. To the sides of the Chair stood warriors who had Killed-The-Great-Beast holding fans made of the feathers of hawks and the hides of spotted dogs, symbols of far-seeing and tenacity. Snake-skins bound the legs of the Chair to bring to mind that which strikes without warning, and the horns of antelopes reminded the warriors of the value of swiftness. The hide of a sphinx lay before the Chieftain, the delicate skin of the breast worn into tatters where it had been scuffed by the knees and elbows of crawling petitioners. The
