Paul O. Williams - Pelbar 03 by The Dome in the Forest

Author:The Dome in the Forest
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

9

The Protector, who had postponed the council because of the Dahmena’s illness, postponed it again after her death and Hagen’s. Then, she issued another controversial order. She commanded that the two funerals be held together in the chapel of Pelbarigan. The north quadrant, which normally would have bridled and protested, acquiesced in their shame, and as the service developed, in the tall, dim stone room, it seemed to acquire a strange logic.

The two coffins lay side by side on trestles, one the neat, plain boards of a Shumai hunter, the other the curved and polished, cloth-draped casket of the most adamant of Pelbar traditionalists. Here they came together in their passing. Hagen had become a local folk hero, through his western adventure with Ahroe, and was beloved by a large portion of the old city, especially by the men and boys, In their deaths, another striking story had been added to the city’s aura, a contemporary legend commensurate with the flight of the two lovers, Ornay and Lynd, or of the courage of the guardsman Murdon, some eighty years earlier, when the Sentani had come upon the wood gatherers unexpectedly in winter.

The Protector chose not to speak, but to let the whole meaning of the event sink in through the singing of the Pelbar choir, fully massed, occupying the fore end of the chapel on raised steps.

Tor and Celeste stood on the side balcony, and as the songs rose, the sounds melding into one another, forming a swelling blend of sadness and exaltation, the girl took the axeman’s hand, tears flowing freely down her face for the first time she could remember. She cried partly for Hagen, whom she had come to know, partly for the rich sadness of human drama joining this unlikely pair. An old order had struggled to maintain itself, then, faded out into the new. How strange it all was, this depth of feeling, this web of relationships forming a large society, always altering and shifting—as if the commands she so familiarly keyed into the electronic networks of the dome would produce different results at different times, not the steady and reliable calculations she was used to. For the first time she caught a glimpse of the kaleidoscopic nature of humanity, its patterns changing, re-forming continually. It seemed frightening and unreliable.

In dying, Hagen had asked to be buried near Ms old Ozar companion, Fitzhugh. As they followed his coffin up the bluffs to Fitzhugh’s high, south overlook, Celeste pondered this, still holding Tor’s hand. The day was warm, and her hand sweat, but she clung to his, as Tor glanced occasionally down at her to see what was troubling her.

As Hagen was lowered into the neatly squared hole, and Ahroe sprinkled the symbolic grass on the coffin, and the shovel-loads of earth began to thud and thunder down on him, Celeste had another odd sensation. Was he gone? Would he always be here? She felt a vague unease. Recycling was neater, easier. What would they prove

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