carried her. The people on the second part of the road told how the queen was ill, because of her grief at leaving the Zone, and the king cradled her ‘like a baby’ and was weeping as they rode.
Yori came along behind the king. At the frontier, he set her on the ground, just on the other side — but not too far, for he could no more travel unguarded in her realm than she could in his, and as soon as she showed signs of coming to herself, stood back, with just one hand on her shoulder to steady her. What she found, when she opened her eyes, was a wild dark night, and the sharp wind that always swept up from the east into her country already strong enough to push her along. She saw Ben Ata, white and grim, and believed him angry, not seeing his concern for her.
Her horse was beside her, she climbed onto it and fled into the dark, she and Yori both vanishing like straw in a storm. And Ben Ata rode back to his camps wondering when she would be ordered to come again.
She had not gone far along the road when she understood, by thinking hard, and with sympathy, what had happened. Now she felt sorrow because she knew that Ben Ata did, and she wished she could reassure him by even a word that she knew he had carried her to her frontier and put her across it and that he could no more believe now he had crushed her down and punished her than she could like in herself the hard accusations and criticisms of his country.
How could she! She, Al·Ith, who was not capable of a cruel or even careless word to anyone at all in her own realm, yet, with this man who was neither more nor less culpable than she, who was — for no fault of his own — king of that sad and sodden and poverty-struck land, she had let venom rule her tongue.
He back with his army, she riding to her capital, thought of each other, and with compassion.
When she reached the top of the pass that led from the plain to the plateau, she reined in Yori, and looked up at the heaped mountains all around. Her life had been lived among these mountains; and watching how they changed and deployed inside their moulding atmospheres had been her recreation and her mind’s nourishment. Now, as she gently turned her horse about and about she saw them as she always had — but saw them, too, as she had from far down in the lowlands, looking up with Ben Ata. She knew that at this moment, now, he would be gazing at those peaks, forbidden or not: he would not be able to help himself. And seeing him stand there, momentarily lost to himself among the tents and picket lines of the camps, his officers, first glancing at each other, with raised eyebrows, would one after another themselves look upwards — and then, following them, the soldiers. Al·Ith was wondering about the women, whom she suspected of being custodians of all kinds of private beliefs. Probably they, or many of them, had never ceased, when no one could see them, to watch the skies westwards, where the mountain snows jay so high in the heavens it was hard to tell them from clouds.
Now she remembered a song — yes, hearing it as she lay in Ben Ata’s arms, not taking it in then, but retaining enough to hear it again now. The song had been part of the mounting delights of their two astonished bodies:
How shall we reach where the light is, Come where delight is?
High on the peaks light changes, Hope ranges.
Clouds? — no, Snow …
Rain here, Snow there:
Freeze-fire white. Flake light.
How may we go there Climb in the air there
Up, up, up from this flat land, Into the high land
That is our way That is our way …
A woman’s high sweet voice had rung through their lovemaking, and these words would now always be melded with their memories of each other.
And yet she knew that the words actually heard by any casual person listening, soldier or uninitiated soldier’s wife, would not have been these — the initiated women would hear them, and she with Ben Ata had heard them — but had he? Well, she would ask when they met next!
She rode forward again and now all along the roads groups of people called out to her, welcoming her back. And she stopped to talk, to listen to their messages, and to tell them, too, that she was pregnant by Ben Ata. The news flew across the plateau as they called to each other, and when she rode into the streets of our capital, the crowds were lining the way and singing and calling out a welcome to the new child, and by the time she had reached her home, she was back in the high easy friendliness which is the common mood of Zone Three.
On the wide steps were waiting her sister Murti· and all the children who called her Mother. She was enclosed by them in love and welcome, and was with them all for a day and night, to hear their tales of what had happened while she was gone. Meanwhile, the bells were ringing out from our information tower, so that no one in all of our Zone could fail to know that she was home and safe and that there would be a new child.
Then, retiring with her sister, leaving the children to their Mind-Fathers and their lessons and games, she went right to the very top of the palace, where the roofs stretched everywhere, level on level, and where it was possible to climb up even farther to a spire higher than any other in the capital. Right at the top of this tower she stood with Murti and she said to Murti, who was wondering at this exertion to visit a place she could not remember ever having tried to reach before, ‘Look, look there …’ and she pointed northwest between a deep gap in the mountains there. The blue of Zone Two gleamed like sapphires. Murti· could see nothing at first but a gap in the mountains with a haze in it.
Al·Ith gazed, letting her eyes fill with the blue, and thought fondly of how Ben Ata had said it was a waste of time, so that she was smiling, and Murti·, glancing at her, knew that she was thinking of her husband, for that smile could mean nothing else. She laughed, and was about to turn to her sister and tease her, begging for facts and bits of news of this famous Ben Ata, the great soldier, but Al·Ith said, ‘No, no, just stand and look …’ For all of her life, she. Al·Ith, had had the possibility of climbing up to this high place and finding Zone Two with her eyes. No one had said she should not! But no one had ever mentioned Zone Two! And yet — yes, as a child she had come here. Now she remembered. She had been a very young girl, before menarche. She had been impelled to climb up and up, first to the immensities of the roofs spreading all over the tops of the many palaces so that she could, if she had wanted to, have jumped from one to another, and around and about for weeks of days. But instead she saw the tall spire, and the little door at its foot and she had crept up and up. And up. And at last had reached the end of the interminably swirling stairs and stood breathless and giddy on the little platform they stood on now, enclosed by the lights of the evening sky. Birds sped past, and called to them. High over the mountains the eagles swung and swerved. She had clung here and looked up and out and it had been as if her whole self had filled with a need to leave here and let herself be absorbed by that endless blue — the blue, the blue, the blue! And it was hours before she had crept down again, her head filled with blue air, and — then, what? She could not remember! She had told someone and been warned? She had not told, but had simply forgotten?
Did it matter? The fact was, all her life the possibility had been here for no more effort than the climb up flights of difficult stairs. And yet it had been as if her own mind had closed itself off to what it could do. Should do. Wanted to do …
Her sister was clinging to the rail with both hands, her fine clear profile lifted, her eyes shining. She seemed to shine everywhere; the strong evening light polished her soft gold hair, and the embroideries on her yellow dress glowed. She had seen!
When she turned to Al·Ith all she said was, ‘Why did we forget it?’
And Al·Ith had no reply.
Next, Al·Ith ordered the bells to peal out an invitation for all the regions to send in messengers, and as quickly as was comfortably possible. Then she took supper with her sister, who wanted to know about this new husband, and while normally she would have told Murti· everything, without any feeling of disloyalty, or betrayal, she found her tongue weighted. Why? Only partly because news about Zone Four must be so foreign to Murti· that it would be