into strong arms, and weep — yours … oh, don’t be shocked, don’t be afraid. I shall of course not do any such thing. I have become suspicious of words and looks — now you tell me what the nature of Zone Four is!’
‘Sit down, Al·Ith.’ This command, which was as she heard it, brought her to sit down: and she sat thinking that he had not meant an order, a command, but it was the sort of suggestion a friend made, yet she had heard an order.
‘It is a place of compulsion,’ she said. ‘There are pressures we do not have here, and know nothing about. They can respond only if ordered, compelled.’
‘Ordered?’
‘No, not the Order, not Order. But do this. Do that. They have no inner listening to the Law.’
‘Have they always been like that?’ he asked, with a sudden illumination which she felt at once, so that she sat up and leaned forward, searching his face.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That may be it. I think you are right.’
‘Al·Ith, things are very bad with us here.’
‘Yes, I know it. I know it now. I should have known it before. If I had not been remiss.’
‘Yes, we are saying now that you must have been remiss. Only now. For it is only now that these different events have come together to make the understanding.’
‘Why was it no one came to tell me … ’ and she remembered that they had, and she had not been listening. ‘Oh, it is right that I am being punished … ’ she cried out, and the amazingness of the words caused her to say in a low bitter voice, ‘Did you hear that? That’s what I mean.’
‘I heard.’
Again, they were quiet, sitting close, enclosed in harmonies.
‘Perhaps if we came together you might be cured?’ he suggested.
She said, ‘As you said that my first thought was suspicion — no, wait, listen. “He is saying that for self-interest.” No, you must not be shocked at me. I am trying to explain … that is how it is with them down there and I am infected by it… . I believe that perhaps, if we joined, completely, I might be cured, improved at least. But there is some other obligation on me, an imposition I have to obey… . I feel it would not be honourable.’
‘Honourable?’ And his smile was quizzical.
‘Yes. Honourable.’
‘You do not belong to Ben Ata and his kingdom.’
‘Who knows!’ And she got to her feet again. The thin white wrapper left her almost naked. She might as well have been. He wore the comfortable loose clothes of his calling, loose trousers, and singlet. They stood close together, hands joined. The black horse Yori stretched out his nose to them from a few paces away. This is a very favourite scene among Chroniclers and artists of our realm. It is called ‘The Parting.’ Or, for the subtler minds, ‘Al·Ith’s Descent Into the Dark.’
‘I would ask you to travel with me,’ she said. ‘But I am not going to. I do not know myself. I do not trust myself. I must go alone. Meanwhile, tell me quickly how things are with you in this part of the steppe.’
Holding her hands, he talked for a while about the sadness of the animals, the poor crops, the falling-off of the weather, the lessening in conception among animals and people.
‘Thank you. And now I shall put on this dress. Tell me to whom I shall return it.’
‘It is my sister’s. She sends it with her friendship.’
‘I shall send one to her in gratitude when I get back to my home.’
He saluted her with a smile, and a gentle kiss on her cheek, and went off. She took off the white wrapper, standing naked, for comfort, among the sunny plants, and then put on the sister’s robe, which was a dark red, shaped as she liked best, close-fitting in the bodice and sleeves, loose in the skirt.
She got back on Yori and rode on towards the northern parts of her kingdom.
Everywhere she stopped her horse, and went to homestead or farm or herdsman’s shelter, to talk and make enquiries, she heard the same news. Either things were worsening fast everywhere, or they were worse here, in the north, where already the chills of an early autumn thickened the air.
She spent only the time she needed to everywhere. She was welcomed with a kindness that had not lessened, though there was not one woman or man or even child who did not speak in the understanding that she had been at fault, and that this new marriage, or mingling, with Zone Four, was to do with this fault or falling-off.
And as she rode through the wilder country of the nothern regions, hilly, many-watered, often precipitous, she remembered — only remembered — the easy, slow-pacing times of the past, for now Ben Ata, Ben Ata, Ben Ata rang in her blood, she could not forget him, and yet every reminder of him was painful and brought a bitter load with it: she knew, she knew better every day and every hour, that she was on the verge of a descent into possibilities of herself she had not believed open to her. And there was nothing she could do to avert it.
Leaving the north, she swung around, with the central massif always at her left, and entered the west. Here it was late summer again, and the sun warm and still. She rode among scenes of plenty and fullness, yet the information was the same, and woman, man, and child greeted her: Al·Ith, Al·Ith, what is wrong? Where have we gone wrong, where have you gone wrong?
The weight of discomfort on her was guilt. Although she did not know it, for she had not known of the possibility of such a state. Recognizing, among the many calamitous and heavy emotions that moved in her, taking so many different shades and weights and colours, this one that returned, and returned, seeming at last to become the ground or inner substance of all the others, she learned its taste and texture. Guilt, she named it. I, Al·Ith, am at fault. Yet whenever this thought came, she started to back away from it in dislike and mistrust. How could she, Al·Ith, be at fault, how could she, only she, be in the wrong … she might be in bondage to Zone Four, but she had not lost the knowledge, which was the base of all knowledges, that everything was entwined and mixed and mingled, all was one, that there was no such thing as an individual in the wrong, nor could there be. If there was a wrong, then this must be the property of everyone, and everybody in every one of the Zones — and doubtless beyond them, too. This thought struck Al·Ith sharply, like a reminder. She had not thought, not for very long, about what went on beyond the Zones … for that matter, she thought very little now about Zones One and Two — and Two lay just there, to the north-west, beyond a horizon that seemed to fold and unfold in blue or purple … She had not looked there for … for … she could not remember. She was on a slight eminence, in the centre of the western regions. She got off the noble Yori, and with her arm flung across his neck for comfort, allowed herself to gaze northwest, into Zone Two. What lay there? She had no idea! She had not thought! She had not wondered! Or had she, a long time ago? She could not remember ever standing as she did now, gazing there, wondering, allowing her eyes to be drawn into those long, blue, deceiving distances … her eyes seemed to be drawn and follow, and become dissolved in blue, blue, blue … a mingling, changing, rippling blue … Al·Ith came to herself after a lapse into the deepest regions of herself, with a knowledge born that she knew would hatch out. Not yet, but soon… . ‘It’s there,’ she was whispering to herself. ‘There … if I could only grasp it … ’ She got back on her horse and rode on always in her wide curve, bending to the left hand, and passed out of the western regions into the south. Her favourite, always her favourite, yes, she had made excuses to come here more often than the other regions … she had been here quite recently, with all her children, and her court and, it seemed, half the population of the plateau. And what a time they had had — festivities, singing — it seemed looking back that they had sung and danced and feasted for all the summer months. And never standing for long pauses in her busy life to rest her eyes in the blue reaches of the Zone which was as much higher than Zone Three as this one was to Zone Four … This idea shook her, shook her as