The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  Every Big Thaw Orbin would set out for Ly to make his sacrifice to Cah in the temple. Sometimes Orhn was taken, and less frequently, Tibo—the old woman then being left to the charge solely of the fierce dogs. Orbin did not use a cart. They walked to Ly, over the muddy mountain tracks, starting before sunup—it took only three or four hours to get there when the snow was gone—returning just ahead of the dark. On these excursions nothing had ever beset them. Bandits seldom came so far north, it was a poor region. By the time of the rains, the more sinister animals had retreated to low country.

  This Thaw Orbin nevertheless went to get the easterner’s knife from inside his mattress. Probably he fancied himself parading through Ly with a steel blade in his belt. The knife had vanished, however, and Orbin spent some while hunting for it, concluding at last the easterner had somehow stolen it back.

  Tibo seemed reluctant to make the journey to Ly, so Orbin told her she would be going. The hopeful Orhn, he decided conversely, must stay behind to guard the house. Orhn was crestfallen, and watched them sadly as they set off into the wet dark morning.

  Tibo walked the correct eight to ten paces behind Orbin, carrying their provisions tied on her back.

  Orbin strode ahead. The sun rose. The passes through these mountains were ramshackle and unsafe, slick with water now, and here the surest danger lay in wait. Glissades of melted ice roared down the distances between huge disembodied fanglike crags. Pebbles dashed underfoot and fell over the slopes, sixty feet or more, to smash on levels beneath. After an hour the travelers began to descend through the stoops of broken valleys. Soon the rain began again. Neither took much notice. This was the way life was.

  • • •

  The robes of the priests of Cah were colorful, the most colorful things to be seen at Ly, umber reds and bold ochers, with discs of polished brass, lozenges of bone and beads of milky resin sewn on. The High Priest’s robe was also trimmed with feathers, and during the mysteries of the temple he wore a mask like a bird’s head. But women were not admitted to the mysteries, saving the temple prostitutes who took part.

  Orbin purchased a pig from the temple pen, and went inside to see its throat cut on the altar. Sometimes, after the cold months’ long incarceration, Orbin would want to go with one of the holy-girls. Tibo had seen from his demeanor as they passed under the girls’ window, where two or three of them always sat on display, that this was the situation now. She stood meekly among the short pillars, while the sacrifice was attended to. It seemed not much more to her than the butchering that went on later in the year. Indeed, the butchers who visited the farms were temple-trained.

  When the pig was dead and its blood spilled copiously, Orbin said his prayers, after which he and the priests went away into the shadows beyond the altar. It was now allowable for Tibo to approach the goddess.

  The smell of blood was raw. In this place, it did not repel Tibo, for it was the untranslatable symbol of life, as of death.

  The girl came to within three feet of the altar, so her boots were in the blood that had overlapped the drain. The carcass itself had been taken off to be portioned. Above the blood-pool Cah was, looking down into Tibo’s eyes and heart.

  Women could not make sacrifices or offerings. They had no property, and to put anything aside would be considered a theft from their menfolk. All a woman could do to please Cah was to bear children. That was a woman’s offering.

  The goddess was a smooth stone, that had had, hundreds of years before, a face hewn from it, and breasts. Balms were constantly poured upon her, and blood splashed her and smoke stained her. These things had made her black. Just as belief had made her powerful. Her eyes were somber amber glass. As the incoherent light of the oil lamps caught her, shifting always with the fluctuation of the burning wicks, these eyes seemed full of sight.

  Tibo did not say a word. She stood and let Cah gaze into her, and behold. Her thanks were her only offering. The offering itself—her thanks.

  For aid, for protection, Tibo did not think to ask. The goddess was Life, and life would protect Tibo, in the same way that it had found her out.

  When the passion was complete between herself and Cah, Tibo left the temple and went on to the terrace. She sat down stilly under the low roof, on the other side from the whores’ window, and waited for Orbin to come out.

  He did so at length, sullen, as the sexual act always made him. He told her he meant to meet some farmers at the drinking-shop. He would be back in time for their daylight departure, he said. “As for you,” he added, “go about and see if you can barter those egg-cakes. Sit there and they’ll take you for a temple girl. You’re getting fat as one, you slug.”

  He came back from the drinking-shop hours after, and it was darkening as they trudged home, and the rain rang like swords on the rocks. Climbing up to the farm valley, now Tibo had to go first, guiding him with the lantern from her pack. Orbin stumbled, and cursed her.

  When they got to the house, Orhn was asleep, and the old woman had wet her chair.

  Orbin, sobered on the return trip, became angry. He struck Tibo and ranted about her utter uselessness. He called her a fat moping bitch.

  These two occasions, on this day, were the first that he appeared to have seen she had begun to thicken at the waist.

  It seemed to her she would carry low, which her mother had said was the sign of a boy.

  • • •

  The year began to turn toward the sun.

  Warm days came. Golden light parasoled the valley.

  Men, earnest to be hired, had started to arrive and to be taken on, and made an untidy camp for themselves at the end of the pasture.

  A flock of fowl pecked in the yard, unaware that others had done so before them.

  The morning of the ploughing, Tibo was up two hours before the sun, to bake bread for the laborers. At dawn Orbin came into the room, and standing Orhn against one wall, drilled him in the kind of noises he must make, how to stand and how to walk over the fields before the men. Initially eager, Orhn grew frightened.

  Tibo set porridge and bread on the table, and Orhn slunk to eat. As she bent to feed the old woman, Orbin came hard against Tibo, and slapped her hip.

  “What’s this?”

  Tibo looked at him, then lowered her eyes.

  “I said, what is it? Answer me?”

  “Orbin-master?”

  “That great wodge of flesh. That belly.”

  Tibo resumed calmly the task of spooning gruel into his mother’s withered old mouth. She said, “I’m childed.”

  Orbin choked a moment on his wrath. Then he exclaimed: “Belly-full pregnant are you? How? Let me guess. Let me guess.”

  Tibo wiped the old woman’s lips.

  Orbin caught Tibo by the hair. He wrenched her about.

  “Who did it then, you sinning rotted mare?”

  Tibo lifted her eyes. Black Vis-Iscaian eyes, that had gazed into the gaze of Cah.

  “Brother-master,” she said, “my husband.”

  “Orhn!” Orbin screamed, ablaze with rage. And Orhn, picking up the inflection, made a raging sound of agreement. “No. Not Orhn, for the tits of Cah. Some visitor, eh? Some eastern thing. Not Orhn, eh?”

  Tibo met the eyes of Orbin, on and on. He was unused to it, a woman who looked at him. Even holy-girls did not.

  “Who else?” said Tibo.

  “I’ve said who else.”

  “That can,” said Tibo, “only be you.”

  He stared. He thought. She saw him do this and was silent to allow it. Then he blustered a moment or so. She did not, of course, interrupt. When he stopped, she said:

  “If it isn’t Orhn, we’ll be questioned. I, and you, master. You’ll swear you never touched me. I shall say you did. Your brother’s wife. I’ll be stoned. You’ll be castrated, and may be stoned. The easterner would never say he’d been here, for fear you had
friends at Ly. There’s no other proof. No other man, then, here with me, but you. And Orhn. I prayed to Cah, and Cah heard me. Orhn has always lain with me as a man should. But I was barren. Now Cah has filled my womb. It’s a wonderful thing.”

  Orbin’s mouth fell open.

  Tibo lowered her eyes. She had never, in all her adult life, spoken so many words at a stretch, and she was rather breathless. Turning, she started again to feed the old woman.

  Orhn tore bread at the table in an outraged manner, copying Orbin.

  Until Orbin sat down at the board, staring blankly into space.

  So the ripe leaves swelled on the citrus trees and the shoots came up behind the plough. Birds flew over the valley, free birds with only weather and fate to be wary of. A pair of black eagles, miles high, day after day swung from a sky that changed from blue to indigo.

  Like the heat and the land, Tibo, blooming and swelling, the bud of her belly taut with its fruit.

  Orhn seemed to have some memory of his mother’s pregnancies. He was interested and encouraging. He sometimes touched the hill of flesh, delicately, and made extra room for Tibo in their bed. When the child began to move, she let him feel it, placing his palm there. Orhn laughed. Perhaps he believed, if capable of such logic, that a miracle had indeed occurred, and that the sowing was his.

  Orbin did not often speak to Tibo, never of her. Only when the hired men were about and she passed among them, to take them food or on some other errand, Orbin behaved normally. The men congratulated Orhn, and Orbin guffawed and nodded and Orhn copied him.

  In the house, if he wanted something, Orbin pointed, or thrust objects under Tibo’s nose. When he must address her, he did so from a great way off, shouting. He did not even strike her any more. Partly, too, that was out of caution. If he had been less religious he would have liked to kick her in the stomach, abort the bitch. But he dared not. Though the law was abused, and though the child, even if a boy, was a half-breed, still any pregnant woman had the mark of Cah on her.

  On her side, Tibo continued to serve the household as she had always done. She stinted not at all. If she was tired or in discomfort she never showed it, it did not slow or stay her.

  The heat flamed, boiled over. Zastis scalded the night and Orbin was often away. Then Zastis was gone and Orbin back. The year began to yellow.

  Harvesting and slaughtering came due, the yard full of cereals, of tubers and cabbage, and then awash with blood.

  The slaughterer-priests looked at Tibo. And at Orhn.

  “We’ve made enough offerings,” said Orbin. Tibo heard him say it as she drew water from the well. “He’s always had his full pleasure, but I reckoned she was wombless. Blessed be Cah, it’s good luck.” And he gave the priests larger portions than usual of the carcasses, for Cah’s temple, to show the family gratitude.

  • • •

  It was a ten-month term for a Vis women, ten wide Vis months. Planted just past one midwinter, the child would be born at the cold season’s next commencement.

  Tibo thought of that in the fading days of the heat, as she plucked the orange citruses among the rocks.

  She might perish, bearing the child. No one would come to her. There were no other capable women at the farm who might assist. She would be alone in labor with two idiots and an enemy.

  But these musings seemed irrelevant. She would bear, and live. And Orbin would be afraid to harm her, for a new mother, also, was Cah’s.

  It was awkward for her, so big now, to gather all the fruit, but she managed it, eventually. In the late sunset she lifted the last baskets, and saw suddenly, between the trees and hard summer rocks, a curious pale runnel in the ground.

  She had had such a glimpse before here, once or twice. The earth was constantly torn open by cold weather, closed again by undergrowth in the heat. Sometimes areas in the soil gave way. Then you saw, deep down, this peculiar underlayer. Some thing lay there, beneath the topsoil, rocks and tree roots. Smooth, like steel, dark white, like ancient porcelain.

  Tibo had no wish to learn its nature. She feared it, obscurely.

  Soon the storms would come, and then the snow probably, and hide the unordinary from sight.

  Taking her baskets of fruit, Tibo turned toward the pasture and the hovel-house, and pushed the memory from her mind by visualizing the changing of the days, copper to bronze, bronze to iron.

  • • •

  It began early.

  There had been a flurry of hail, frisking over the valley, the sun a broken egg of light pierced by mountain tops. And as she cracked the skin of ice in the well, a shriek of pain ran through the core of her.

  She completed her duties swiftly then, even running, where the ice and pain permitted.

  She did not speak to Orbin, but set out the supper, then went away to the dog-shed, where she had already made a birthing bed for herself, catlike, with all the items laid by she would need. It was appropriate that she strive and bear here, where she had taken the child in, and by the glow and warmth of the same brazier.

  The dogs, for the most part, ignored her. Blackness and Rag, the two bitches, sensing kinship, came occasionally and stared in her face and licked her wrists.

  The pains ran together. She heaved and moaned, gripping in her hands, and pulling against, the rope with which she had circled her lifted waist. As the rope tightened and relaxed with the spasms, its strangling burn momentarily distracted from the tearing pain within: An old Iscaian woman’s trick. Cah’s teaching.

  Once she thought Orbin had come to the shed door and listened.

  In her anguish Tibo called aloud the traditional words:

  “Cah! Cah, aid me!”

  She was safe from Orbin. She was Cah’s.

  After some hours, her pain burst in and from her. With a scream of terror and agony and release, Tibo watched the head of her baby pushed into the world. When the body came out, Tibo saw she had birthed a perfect living creature. She hastened to cut and knot the cord, to clean the child’s mouth and skin. It cried and breathed, blind as a puppy. Blackness came and investigated the baby, thrusting her long nose against the child, and Tibo pushed her away, mildly. Exhausted, she brought her child to her breast. Her invention, he lived, as she did, and was a male as she was not.

  3. Found and Lost

  KATEMVAL AM ALISAAR, saddle-sore, snow-sick, shouted his men off the track, in order to make way for a descending funeral.

  Traveling as he did, needing travel and yet never hardened to it, Katemval had witnessed a variety of events. He knew, in this instance, how the Iscaians were, and was not amazed to see only women out in the cold; that meant only a woman had died.

  It had been audible, the dull resonance of the bronze gongs, from two miles away, in the high clear air.

  Then they came down the track, dark on young snow, first fall, and powdery—the snows of the western mountains were nothing, even at their worst, to a winter of the Middle Lands, Dorthar, Xarabiss, let alone Lanelyr in the east.

  Some of the men, superstitious, made religious signs. One, an Iscaian, turned his head and looked aside. It was unfortunate to regard upland feminine rites.

  Four women carried the coffin, which was of rough untidy wood and nailed shut. Such biers seldom needed more than four porters for the wretched uplands did not generate plumpness in either sex. Strong though, often, both genders; his reason for being here, the Alisaarian, on his large black thoroughbred—an animal maybe these villagers had never seen. Although they did not glance at it as they went by, walking before and after their dead, banging the gongs with the flats of their narrow gloveless hands.

  There was one—the chief mourner, to judge by her position exactly behind the coffin. Katemval’s eyes followed her a way along the curve of the slope. Something special there, something that might have been worth going after, twenty years earlier. Too late now. She had been bent and coile
d to her existence, as was all humanity, like a vine to a stock. You took them as children if you wanted them formed to a purpose.

  The track wound down and away into the white afternoon, and the procession with it, the crags of the Iscah-Zakoris borders a dim shadowy backdrop. The drone of the gongs lingered after the women had vanished.

  “Come on,” Katemval said, to his five men. “Or do you want to freeze in the saddle?”

  It was a joke, of a sort. Save for her northern and eastern hem, Alisaar never knew snow. These effete western-upland colds were horrible to an Alisaarian, or to the man of the Iscaian lowlands, reared under the snow-line.

  Katemval rode on, up the track, the thoroughbred treading solidly. He trusted his information was correct. Youth, health, and penury. Or it would be a wasted journey.

  By tonight he must be back in Ly, tomorrow they would have to make for Ly Dis (where he had left the other children), then get down to the capital and the ports before the upland weather shut on them. For such a dot of a country, Iscah was tortuous going.

  They reached the valley not long after. The farm, if so it could be named, huddled in the dip. Smudged air crawled from the chimney and dogs barked.

  As Katemval rode up, a couple of men emerged, with three big hounds to heel.

  “Good day,” said Katemval, politely.

  “Ah,” said the nearer man, shorter and more muscular than the other who stood behind him.

  Katemval let them each have a fair long look, at his furs and owar thigh-boots, his men on zeebas, his own riding animal worth more than the whole farm, probably. The fellow at the back seemed silly in the head.

  “I’ll come straight to it,” said Katemval, to the other man with sly pouchy eyes. “I heard there was a child here, one too many, that you’d be happy to be shot of.”

  They gawped. It was not actually what he had heard at all, only that there was a child. Children were not always a benefit, and from something in the way this one had been gossiped of, it had seemed to fit that category.

  “Seven silver Alisaarian draks,” said Katemval. “Providing the brat’s suitable, of course.”