CHAPTER THIRTY

After crossing the plateau, the route taken by Habre drops down gradually to the fertile valley of the Ibres. Chaldez soon began to miss the wide horizons and vast tree-less wilderness which they had lived with on the hot plateau. Its sights and sounds had bewitched him: the billowing seas of shining grasses, the flowers, the bold, piercing songs of the otherwise secretive little birds which dipped and swooped among the boulders and low, shiny-leafed shrubs, but most of all, the great ragged-winged birds which wheeled and soared across the blinding sun, their harsh, mournful cries coming out of the heavens like the bitter reproaches of the long-wronged dead. He had had a love affair with the high plateau, and now it was over.
The descent to the Ibres took them into the kingdom of Verenni; neither Dan nor Chaldez had heard of it, but according to Habre it was as large as Eujinni, and more prosperous. The River Ibres is its chief artery, but instead of a forest filling the river valley there are vineyards. It was mid-summer, and they shimmered in the heat.
Whenever the four travellers came to a town Chaldez played his zaratha while Habre set up a stall and performed his magic, aided and abetted when necessary by Dan.
Eonni revealed that she possessed a strong singing voice and she told Chaldez that she would like to learn some of his songs. He was deliberately off-hand. "You must ask your husband," he told her.
Habre, it seemed, had no objection, and Chaldez was acutely embarrassed to have Eonni practically glued to his side; he was scorched by her sensuality. Everything about Eonni was exaggerated: her wild, bushy hair; her wide set, wide brown eyes; her wide, full-lipped mouth and her voluptuous breasts and big rounded buttocks. He concentrated very hard on his zaratha, and tried to show Habre that he had no designs on his wife.
Whether Habre thought he had or not was something he kept to himself, but Dan made his own suspicions obvious. He glowered at Chaldez and became sullen and uncommunicative.
Chaldez got him alone and said: "It's not the old story. Eonni . . . well, she's very nice but there's nothing between us."
Dan scowled: "A bowl of cream is safer with a cat than women are with you - and you know it." Then he added, darkly: "If you hurt her, you'll answer to me."
Chaldez said: "I'll answer to you, Dan. I always have, though I don't know why," and feeling as angry with himself as he did with Dan he walked away.
When he had got over his anger, it grieved him that Dan should so mistrust him, but it seemed there was nothing he could do about it. And Eonni did nothing to help him. As they walked along from one town to another she would come up to him, so close that he could feel the heat of her body, and say: "Play for me Chaldez," and then he would have to strum the unwieldly zaratha as he walked along, and she would hum and eventually start to sing, and when the song was finished she would laugh and clap her hands and kiss his cheek. While he died.
Before they reached Droth, capital city of Verenni, she had begun to sing with him when he played for money. She invariably drew a crowd; a woman singing as a public entertainer was extraordinary, and sometimes her audience was vociferously disapproving, but Eonni was never silenced; indeed, her critics always ended up applauding her.
In Droth she was immediately popular. The citizens, less censorious than their provincial cousins, were hungry for just such a novelty as Eonni with her dramatically sensual appearance and emphatic, fearless singing.
On the second day of their stay, she and Chaldez were in the middle of a song when they were interrupted by an officious individual whom Chaldez assumed was forbidding them to continue. But Eonni, who spoke a little of the Verenni language, understood him to be inviting them both to perform for his master, a nobleman who was giving an entertainment the following evening at his palace.
Habre took the news stoically enough when he heard it, but Dan was furious. He was now angry with everyone: with Eonni for being so friendly with Chaldez; with Chaldez for encouraging her, and with Habre for doing nothing about it.
The nobleman's palace was unlike anything Chaldez had seen before. It covered a vast area and consisted of numerous single-storey buildings surrounding a higher rectangular structure surmounted by a gilded dome. Here was the great hall, and it was in this that the banquet and entertainment took place.
Chaldez and Eonni performed while the guests feasted. There was so much noise that it was obvious no one could hear them, and Chaldez grew angry, and played loud, harsh notes. Between songs Eonni said: "Calm down, Chaldez. It doesn't matter."
His anger began to ebb away, and he remembered the banquets at the royal stavista at Jeggan; they had invariably been attended by musicians whom no one had taken the slightest notice of. Their existence, let alone their feelings, had barely impinged upon his own consciousness, so why did he think things would be different at a nobleman's palace in Verenni?
Later he and Eonni were summoned to a side room where other entertainers were awaiting their turns. Among them was a troop of dancers, and judging by the way Eonni talked and laughed with them, Chaldez supposed she must know them. An official gave him a small bag of money and he waved it at her, but she shook her head. Then she left her friends and told him: "I have met some of my countrymen. One of their dancers is injured and I will take her place."
Chaldez looked at her quizzically. "You'll know what to do?" he asked.
She laughed and kissed his cheek. "I expect so," she said, and returned to the others. Chaldez settled down in a corner to play the zaratha quietly to himself.
It seemed to him that the dancers were away for ages; when at last they returned they fussed excitedly around Eonni, but Chaldez was not so familiar with their language that he could understand exactly what was being said. Eventually Eonni embraced them all, in farewell, he supposed, and came and told him that she was ready to leave. He stood up and she drew him to one side and held out her closed hand. She opened it slowly to reveal a small, deep red gem.
"One of the guests liked my dancing," she said, smiling with delight. "He gave me it."
Chaldez was impressed. Later he learned from Habre that Eonni had been a celebrated dancer in Boa-Isgaad. "She once danced for the Va Rein himself," he said.
This was a revelation indeed: Habre had never before spoken of their past, and in answer to Chaldez's next question he said: "She gave it all up when we left our homeland."
Chaldez asked him why they had left, but all Habre would say was that there had been some trouble, and from his tone, Chaldez knew that he would be told no more.
They stayed on in Droth for several more days, and it was while Chaldez was playing alone to a small crowd that he thought he saw Doo. He was on the verge of calling out to her when the figure turned and he knew he was mistaken. That night he dreamt that Doo really was in Droth, and he then began to see her constantly.

Part of his mind told him he was being stupid, but it was a part which he was unwilling to heed. That he and Doo would once more be together was woven into the fabric of their fate; it was an inevitable as it was imperative. He began to yearn for her, and instead of playing the folk songs he had taught Eonni, he composed his own wistful, melancholic tunes for which there were no words.
"People won't pay to hear that," Dan told him, but Chaldez ignored him.
After leaving the capital, they continued north towards the city state of Ibre-Shad, gateway to Boa-Isgaad, the Sei Empire, the great desert kingdom of Karandi, and places so remote that they stand on the very edge of the Abyss. Its port serves a vast hinterland, and through it funnels a multitude of merchants.
The road along the wide Ibres valley was crowded, and had become so spread out that its interweaving tracks engulfed whole villages. Ibre-Shad itself was visible from a great distance. The surrounding countryside is flat and almost tree-less so that its peculiar sky-line of domes and thin, needle-like towers seemed to be enlarged as it shimmered against the horizon.
The birds, too, were visible from quite a distance. They filled the air above the city, circling and soaring on wide motionless wings in an endless, slow-motion dance.
The needle-like towers revealed themselves to be enormously high wooden-clad spires, their sides decorated with swirling patterns of red, gold, silver and blue. Around each pinnacle, supported by an intricate arrangement of struts, was a platform, and around the platforms there was constant aerial activity as great flapping birds closed in to land or ponderously took off.
"What's up there?" Chaldez asked.
"Corpses," said Habre. "It's our religion. The birds carry their flesh into the heavens."
"I hope I don't die here," Dan muttered.
The towers, said Eonni, were ti-jyoths. "Ibre-Shad has the highest in the world. It's famous for them." And it was clear she had not heard Dan's remark, for she added: "People are brought here to die within the shadow of the ti-jyoths."
Ibre-Shad was the largest city Chaldez had seen; there were temples everywhere, each to a different deity, it seemed, and each trying to out-do its rivals in size and splendour. The main streets were cobbled, and teemed with people and animals.
The four travellers stopped beneath the shade of some trees in a wide square and considered what they should do next.
Habre and Eonni planned to raise enough money to pay for their passage to Boa-Isgaad.
By now Chaldez had resolved to go to the Sei Empire where he was sure he would find an ally to attack Sigmar. He had spoken to Dan about it, and Dan, with no better idea, agreed it made sense of sorts. "If we come with you," said Chaldez, "we could go on from there to the Sei Empire. How much farther is it?"
"A considerable voyage," said Habre.
"A voyage?" repeated Dan. "Is the empire on a island?"
"No," laughed Habre, "but Boa-Isgaad is."
Dan looked at Chaldez, who knew what he was thinking. "How else can we get to the empire?" he asked.
"There is no other way," retorted Habre. "Every ship between here and the empire calls at Boa-Isgaad. It's on the way."
Dan shrugged. He loathed the sea, but there was no question of goig back now.
"We'll make a fortune here," said Chaldez.
Dan cheered up at the prospect of that. "Tomorrow," he said, "I start work. But today I'm going to look around."
The next day he and Habre set up their stall on one side of a wide square, and Chaldez and Eonni played and sang on the other.
During the course of the morning Habre walked over to them. "I've lost Dan," he said. "I had to leave him and when I got back he'd gone. Have you seen him?"
They had not, and he returned to his stall.
Towards noon Chaldez and Eonni decided to do no more until the sun was lower in the sky. They found Habre at his stall; he was still alone. He packed it away, and Chaldez began to look around for Dan. He wandered out of the square, and when he eventually returned to it after a fruitless, if a somewhat half-hearted search, he was greeted by a very agitated Eonni.
"Dan's been arrested!" she burst out. "We've found some people who saw it happen. He swindled a nobleman, who had him arrested. He'll be in the city dungeons by now. Habre thinks we'll never get him out."
"Dan," said Chaldez, turning his eyes heavenwards, "you fool! You stupid fool!"