by Tanith Lee
Not until the shadow fell did she halfway see her predicament.
Then she sat up on the snow, hare-like, her eyes discs of fear.
Human, she would have reasoned eagles and craits were rare in this area, tending to the uplands or the coast. Animal, she merely saw death with a wingspan broad as the sky, stooping on her.
Her trance shattered. She fled away, leaping down the slope towards the cover of the ice-forest.
Two shapes now, one small and racing, one soaring gently overhead.
As the glow of the Stones was left behind, only starlight illuminated the chase.
The hare pelted forward. All thought was over. Panic ruled her – she had become only a little hunted beast.
The eagle sailed on its wings, drifting. He looked weightless as a cobweb. Then, the tremendous pinions flared and closed—
He dropped, no longer cobweb but a hammer of basalt. The night parted, tore, to let him through.
At the edge of the forest, up against its first glacial columns, the eagle met his quarry. His talons, like hooks of bronze, pierced into her back.
She screamed. Blood spurted in darkness.
A vapour seemed to cloud and clear, and Jemhara lay pinned to the earth, naked on the snow but for a ruby on her hand, and her cloak of hair. Thryfe stood above her, residue of nightmare. His face was still that of the eagle, though the blade of beak and bitumen feathers were sloughed. His eyes assessed Jemhara. They were incendiary and – worse than insane – quite sane.
Sensing the change in her adversary, as in herself, her humanness returning, the woman pushed herself up on her elbows. The cold ground seared her, but no more fearsomely than the bloody wounds that glared in her back.
She knew who he was. Who else could he be? She had seen him too, now and then, at the court, striding about there clad in his scorn. When she angled her head to look at him now, prudently she did not meet his eyes.
Thryfe, though, had never properly noticed her.
‘Why have you hurt me?’ she whispered. Even in this situation, she was nearly flirtatious.
‘To teach you a lesson,’ he said.
‘I am taught.’
‘No. Next time, if an eagle hunts you, girl, take on again your human shape before he strikes. Have you learned that now?’
‘Yes. Please let me up, or I’ll be burnt.’
Thryfe stepped away. He watched her get herself to her feet. The front of her body was flushed from snow-burn, but not badly. Her attractions, which like this were very obvious, would not be spoiled. Her back might be another matter.
Could she heal herself of the scars his talons had undoubtedly made? Who was she anyway? From her ring alone, he could tell she was some city woman – but a witch. It came to him then: he recalled who she was, and that she belonged not to the dead Sallusdon, but to the living Vuldir.
‘Good night, madam,’ said Thryfe. He turned and began to move away.
He was not astonished to hear the whimper she gave, or next the soft sound as she collapsed to the snow. She had surely not fainted; it was her ploy to gain his aid.
He paused. Would he give it? When he looked back, she lay there sidelong on the ground, and over her velvet body, black hair and black blood dripped. If she did now pretend, it demanded stamina in her, to lie so still again on the freezing earth.
Thryfe walked over and picked her up in his arms. It was many years since he had held a woman. Her eyes flicked open. For an instant put out, Thryfe saw that she had not pretended at all, but had been unconscious. And looking down into her eyes then, Thryfe met their shallow floor, and beheld that, behind the shallowness, they possessed a depth which went on for miles. Her eyes were like an oculum: you might see eternity in them.
‘I’d better remedy your scratches,’ he said. She sighed as he carried her over the snow towards his house.
At some point, Thryfe drew off his cloak and wrapped her in it. The blood pressed on through the heavy cloth. It was already on his hands, his own clothes.
Strangely, moving through the blank of night, her blood seemed to him to have a scent, unlike the expensive perfumes of her body and hair. It was like the smell of pure, liquid water.
He was completely aware that, as the eagle, he had wished to scatter this blood, and rip chunks of her body off her bones. He had not hunted anything in that manner in over twenty years, about the same margin as his celibacy.
When he reached the house, the gargolem guards had returned inside. Whatever weirdness had been abroad in the night, then, was now extinguished. Thryfe supposed, anyway, that he held it in his arms.
She was senseless and icy. She might have been dead, though her blood went on streaming from her.
But she would live.
More than most, the Magikoy, who had studied the ancient texts of the Ruk, and reports from all the known world, comprehended the knack of human survival. When first the age of ice had fastened on these lands, a great heart had been stilled. Man and beast, and flora of all kinds, were cauterized by the cold. To begin with, it was only possible to go on by huddling in fastnesses. Perhaps they had prayed, but the cold did not relent. It was Winter – and Winter had come to stay.
Once Winter ruled, however, the arts of a vibrant magecraft were born among mankind. From desperation or from blind faith, magic matured, and became the limitless technology by which mankind could persist. But also humankind was itself adapting. A century or more had passed, and cut away with it the weakest among man, animal and plant. A new race arose from the embers of the old one. These were peoples and creatures who could withstand the negative temperatures, and whose blood did not congeal on the sub-zero plains. As for the vegetation, it had clearly learned how to outwit the cold. Palm trees wrapped themselves in steel, grapevines clustered the ice in protective cryogenic pods; fruit and grain slept, awaiting only the kiss of warmth.
Therefore, now, Thryfe could stride back for an hour over the frozen waste, a naked bleeding woman in his grip. And she would live.
He healed her wounds swiftly, in the subtor chamber deep below the house. Then he restored her blood. All this Thryfe did by his craft. For one of his order, it was not difficult.
He left her to sleep in the care of a jinnan, a mild spirit of the house which was adept at seeing to such things.
Up in the towery, Thryfe resumed his inner debate on the weapons of the Insularia. His mind would not stay on this, since Jemhara still glinted at the border of perception. To her, his thoughts returned. She was like a silver splinter under his skin.
The night went by, and the next day. In the oculum, Thryfe scanned the city of Ru Karismi, loud with banners, glad after its mourning. Olchibe and Gech too he visited through the sphere. Like ants, the armies of the north and east teemed together now. Among them something blazed.
Thryfe knew he must decide, and go back to the capital.
On the second night, he went into the room where he ate – when he did eat – and found two places set at his table. The jinnan housekeepers had done this, maybe because the girl had asked them to, though he had not proscribed it. He questioned himself why he had not.
Then Jemhara entered the room. They had given her a dress from some pattern kept here for visitors – as if there were ever such beings as visitors, or as if they would ever have needed spare clothing. Her hands were free of gems, her face of makeup. She was like a pretty child – but he had seen into her eyes.
None but Thryfe, or some similarly acute mage, could ever have seen what her eyes truly contained. And who among such persons would ever have looked? If he stared now at her spiritual heart, he could see the same. Heartless, yet the heart-bud was there, a miniature atom. It had begun to swell and grow, bursting the calyx.
Jemhara stood gazing at Thryfe. Her eyes – they overwhelmed him, filled him with vertigo. He had not lived, and here life was. He could never have predicted this moment, nor any other foreseen it for him. Yet it was inevitable as sunrise. Be the night long as twenty-eight years,
still dawn must arrive.
As for her, she could not take her eyes from his. She, who hid everything, hid nothing. He had seen her soul. She had one: it was now undeniable. She wanted only to be seen – by him.
She fell on her knees to him. This was neither fright nor deception.
‘You must go back to the court,’ Thryfe said.
While he spoke, he thought, What rubbish am I saying?
Jemhara said, ‘Don’t send me away. Vuldir forced me to come to you. He wants you dead. I can tell you all he’s done – and I have done for him.’
‘Vuldir?’ Thryfe hesitated, between amusement at the absurd idea, and agony at this. ‘Get up,’ he said.
Jemhara spread her body on the floor at his feet.
She was a witch, and had talents. Thryfe could see those as well, through her physical casing, like jewels frozen in water.
He leant down and lifted her upright, on to her feet.
Her eyes were so near now, he saw the triumph in them. Why had he never noticed her, this woman? He had, he thought, not dared to.
But she had seen him. Her lies to herself had been much greater.
The triumph in her eyes was sexual. He wanted to cast her out – kill her even.
Instead he held her there.
Jemhara had no terror – except that these minutes might end.
Unlike the mage, a love-life had been predicted for her. Her mother back in the stead had saccharinely promised it, and the old witch-sadist had threatened it would be removed if eight-year-old Jema did not obey her. But heartless, made deliberately so, Jemhara was as ill-educated as Thryfe. Although her heart, like her eyes, would soon have achieved a depth not normal among mankind. Jemhara after all could melt ice. She had melted his – and her own.
Braver than he by far, she flung herself against him and took hold of his neck. Her claws bit into him like eagle talons.
‘Vuldir gave me a ruby ring. I’ve crushed it to bits. I will kill Vuldir for you. Let me die for you,’ she said. ‘Kill me, if you like.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s time enough.’
Mouth to mouth, breast to breast, flesh to flesh, words were uninvented. The sky crashed and world spun into the abyss. New lovers always think so.
TWO
In the tent of Arok, warrior of the Jafn Holas, a night-black woman sat in silence, braiding beads into her hair.
They were a present brought her by a man, a warrior of the Jafn Shaiy, and they were gold.
Arok lay on the tent floor, a pillow under his head. It was a sleep night, but he could not sleep.
‘Chillel?’
She did not answer. Her silences nevertheless were sometimes like dialogue.
‘Chillel – come here. Lie down with me.’
Chillel put aside the beads and went to her husband, whom she had wed by Jafn ritual, a cord tied round her right hand and his left hand.
Arok now made love to Chillel, although this was not the practice of a sleep nocturnal. As ever she was welcoming, blissful – totally uninvolved.
Arok hit her, a slap across the face. It did not seem to affect her at all. He had done it before, and there was never a mark. He had originally anticipated she would bruise white on her darkness.
The Gullahammer, the force of allied Jafn, Olchibe and Gech, had turned and now was riding and parading back, down the northern outcrop of the land, into the south.
It moved, as ever, slowly, trundling chariots and carts, mammoths, lions and men, like a sleepy inrush of thawed sea. They had reached the Marginal. From the ice-forests still men came out to join them. Elsewhere villages lay deserted, either in fear or unable to sustain themselves, their male population all gone.
A month back, Fazions had ridden into the war camp, on their demon horsazin fish-horses. This was some way inland from the coast, yet they had made the trip.
Several of the Jafn spoke their gabbling tongue; he, the Lionwolf, had of course learned it. Then he and some of the Chaiords, Peb Yuve the Olchibe leader, and three wizards from Gech, sat down with the Fazions. Their blued faces and the standard of the blue sun were lit up together by Jafn truce torches of green fire.
Arok had been there also. He was not unknown to the Lionwolf, who had graced the wedding ritual as Arok wed Chillel, and afterwards feasted among the wedding guests. Arok, as custom dictated, did not speak to his wife until they were alone. The custom derived from Star Black, and could not have been more uncannily suitable.
The Fazions, however, had come to ally themselves with the Gullahammer. They foresaw nice pickings, and offered their ten Mother Ships, and ten jalees of thirteen vessels each, in service to Lionwolf’s cause.
Arok, who had himself a smattering of Fazion speech, overheard them muttering to each other. ‘He is a god,’ they said of Lionwolf. They had been quicker than most to dispense with excuses.
Their shamans soon performed a sending, to fetch in others, and some Vormish allies of the Fazions too.
The Jafn regarded the Faz shamans with critical distaste – filthy stenchful men draped in the reeking fishy skins and horns of dead horsazin, they pranced about shaking rattles, and shrieking like girls in sex or childbed. Yet the sending was a success. More Faz rode in, together with the Vorms, whose faces were striped with carmine. Each Vormish horsaz had been striped similarly.
Arok lay trying to think about this recruitment, and how the camp of the Gullahammer now stank of fish. Meanwhile his exquisite wife, who had chosen him, yet whom all men had wanted … well, now most of them had had her, too, he believed.
Because she was reckoned supernatural, no one had denied her other choices, nor had Arok challenged any of them. He had not known what to do; for the first time in his adult life, no proper code applied.
He had gone to the Ranjal-goddesses in the cart, told them his predicament.
They answered that he need only enjoy Chillel, and no harm would come.
‘But if she conceives a son how will I know if it’s mine?’
With unusual coherence, the Ranjals said, ‘Be yours, if you husband her.’
God had made Chillel, made her directly – without recourse to anything human. Against this you could not go. And so – though a woman – she held Arok helpless in her hand.
When he hit her, he was afraid. Since he was afraid, he did it now quite regularly, facing up to it. It made no impression on her. But nor did God smite Arok for his blasphemy. What did God want?
‘To make a fool of me,’ said Arok, aloud.
She had now left the bed and gone back to her beads.
Arok got up. He crossed the tent and smashed the beads in all directions.
‘Cutch-whore, take yourself out of my tent. Go to one of your three thousand others, and stay with him – you bitch.’
Without a word, Chillel rose. She had that slight enchanting smile on her lips he first saw when she chose him. He wanted to break her neck – but was too cowardly to try.
When she had left the tent, he stood in the opening, watching her move away through the firelit dark of the huge camp.
On the horizon, almost, above the sleeping Jafn tents, Arok saw a Faz warrior appear – keeping barbarically sleepless for seven nights, as always.
Arok’s proud blood froze. Before, she had gone among the Jafn, even maybe among the leaders of Olchibe vandal bands – but not with such as this.
The Faz had put out his hand, and Chillel took it.
Arok retched. He hawked and spat on the snow. While doing that, he missed the last sight of her going down the slope to the hearth of her current mate.
Peb Yuve sat across from Lionwolf in the Jafn tent. Lionwolf’s chariot lions, in their indoor golden collars, lay at the men’s feet. Peb had become accustomed to the lions, just as had Lionwolf’s mammoth.
Peb and Lionwolf played a Jafn war game, with a painted board and little carved figures. Lionwolf was letting Peb win, and Peb knew this, accepting the courtesy. Having surrendered after Lionwolf slew the white
bear, Peb Yuve had offered the young man-god the formal Olchibe kindnesses of a father to a grown son – exactly as the Olchibe ghost, Guri, had suggested he might.
Peb Yuve had only seen the ghost once – and did not see him tonight, though he was sitting up on a small table at Peb’s back. The lions sometimes did see Guri, but were tolerant of him – even if, now and then, he would pull their manes and they would snap.
Lionwolf could see him too, over Peb’s shoulder.
Guri sat there scowling at the floor and retying his braids, on and on. He had not been about for a season.
‘Your chieftain is dead,’ said Peb, removing the figure and winning the game.
‘So he is. Well managed, sir.’
They conversed in Olchibe, but Peb by now was also used to turns of Jafn and Rukar phrases, titles.
‘You let me win.’
‘I?’ Lionwolf’s eyes widened. He had the charm not of a man but of what he was – something between king, animal and elemental, tinged always with deity and strangeness.
Over Peb’s shoulder, Guri swore, tore a knot out of his hair, rebraided viciously.
‘The black woman,’ said Peb Yuve, ‘they say she’s left her Jafn match. She’s off among the Blue-Faces.’
‘The Faz? Why not?’ Lionwolf seemed indifferent.
‘She’s caused some trouble between your Jafn warriors,’ said Peb. ‘Some skirmish for her.’
‘Soon they’ll have more important work to do.’
‘Not a man that stood by, thought she’d come there for any but you.’
‘Then she must have been confused,’ said Lionwolf. ‘Maybe the sun was in her eyes. Why, Peb Yuve, are we talking about women?’
‘You think she is a sacred being, like your hero down east, Star Black. She’s a harlot – and a good thing you never took her to yourself.’
‘Oh, if I’d had her, do you think she’d have gone off with any other?’ The young magician had bridled.
On his table Guri wriggled. A cup set there made a knocking sound.
Not looking about, Peb said, ‘Is he here, your shadow-uncle?’
‘Yes.’
‘Greeting, Guri,’ said Peb Yuve. He was always polite to Lionwolf’s familiar. Guri shook his head. ‘Did he hear me?’