by Tanith Lee
“Yes, I see you are.” His mouth took on a scornful slant. “You must have missed him unbearably to come here alone. These streets are no place for a court woman, particularly after dark.”
“I—have to see him. . . .” She halted, uncertain as to what he would do, how much credence he would give her. If he judged her a pestering fool, no doubt he would do his best to keep between her and the Dragon Lord. But there was an unexpected warmth in his tone when he spoke again.
“If you’ll forgive me, you seem unwell. Come inside. The place is grim enough, but at least impervious to river damp.”
They passed between a row of sentries at perfect attention and in through the studded cibba-wood doors. Too casually he said to her: “Has he given you a child?”
“No,” she said. Her eyes watered with tiredness. “No. And yet,” she thought, “it’s because of a child that I’ve come.” Ashne’e’s child, taken in the concealing dark from the palace, now hidden away in one of the dank houses by the river and fed on pulps. The old woman who rented out the slum had scarcely glanced at the baby’s tiny damaged paw, but no doubt she was inured to the injured brats and frenzied mothers among the poor. Lomandra struggled against a sudden dreadful urge to weep. She seemed to have lived a year without sleep. Why she had done as the Lowlander told her she hardly knew, and did not permit herself to seek for an answer, afraid of what it might be.
She felt the young man’s grasp on her arm increase.
“You aren’t well. Sit here, and I’ll go for Kren myself.”
And she was seated in a small lamplit room, where a fire smoked dully in the grate.
It seemed a long time before he came, a tall broad-shouldered man, dressed informally in brown leather and the dark red cloak of the Garrison. He had a tough intelligent face, scarred, like his body, in his earliest youth from border fights in the Thaddric mountains and sea skirmishes with Zakorian pirates. But the face was dominated by a pair of observant and remarkably steady eyes. His smile was concerned and friendly but no more, for there had never been sentiment between them; only in a bed had they been lovers.
“How can I be of service, Lomandra?”
She opened her mouth but could seem to get no words out. In the pause, he saw the oldness in her face. Her eyes were sleepless and unpainted, her beautiful hair hung lankly on her shoulders.
“Liun seems to think you have my child.”
“No. Besides, it would have made no difference to us.”
Again silence choked her. He went to a table and poured wine into two cups. She took the goblet, and when she had swallowed some of the drink, words came into her mouth.
“I need your help. I must leave Koramvis. If I remain, it’s likely the Queen will kill me.”
He looked at her for a while, then drank.
“I’ve told you of the Lowland girl Ashne’e.”
“The enchantress who poisons your sleep with bad dreams,” he said quietly.
“Yes, perhaps. . . . Her child was born a month ago.”
“I’d heard of it.”
“Val Mala had medicines mixed with the girl’s food—she hoped the child would be stillborn. When it lived, she ordered me to kill it—smother it. She wanted the small finger of the left hand given her as a token of its death.”
Kren’s face darkened. He drained the cup and dashed the dregs into the fire.
“The bitch is insane. Does she think you’re her butcher?”
“I didn’t do it, Kren. Ashne’e—cut the finger away—I—have never seen such a savage purpose. I sent Val Mala what she asked. But the child is still alive.”
Her whole body drooped on the narrow soldier’s couch. He set down his cup and sat beside her, putting a gentle arm about her.
“And you have this child hidden somewhere.”
She was very glad of his perception.
“Yes.”
“You’re a brave woman to go against Val Mala.”
“No. I’m afraid to my very soul. But Ashne’e—she asked that I take the baby out of Koramvis, leave it in some Lowland holding on the Plains. The Queen will murder her as soon as she has the means, and the child, too, if she can find it.”
“Then she must be positive it’s Rehdon’s work.”
“It has the skin of a Vis,” Lomandra said softly, “but its eyes—are her eyes.”
“I’ll help you get safely to the Plains,” he said. “A traveling chariot and two men—more would arouse suspicion. I’ll make certain you can trust them.”
“Thank you, Kren,” she whispered.
“And you,” he said, “what of you, Lomandra?”
“I?” She looked at him distantly, finding she had not thought of herself, only of the child. “I suppose I shall return to Xarabiss. My family are dead, but I have jewels I can sell. Perhaps I’ll marry into some noble house; I’ve been well-trained in aristocratic etiquette.”
He touched her hair lightly, got to his feet once more and went to stand beside the smoking fire.
“I’ll see to it that there’s transport ready in the morning. Sleep here tonight. There are several private chambers you can choose from.”
She saw that it was solicitude prompted him to make this offer that she sleep alone. Perhaps, besides, he had already made arrangements with a woman of the Garrison to share his bed. She felt too weary not to be glad, yet, at the same instant, vague regret, for she would not see him ever again.
4.
THE CITY WAS ROUSED at midnight by an apocalyptic blaze of watch fires, running torches and the clangor of bells. Men in the black and rust livery of the Storm Palace stood shouting in the public places of Koramvis, riders galloped through the avenues and alleyways, bawling their proclamation as if the end of the world had come.
It was to be a night of fire and terror.
Treachery. Blasphemy.
Amnorh, High Warden of Koramvis, Councilor of the dead Storm Lord, had the curse of the gods on his back. He had taken the Lowland witch, whose evil had first slain Rehdon, and used her as his harlot. His bastard, not the Storm Lord’s heir, had thriven in her devil’s body.
The work was done well. The absurd pride of the Dortharian rabble, who believed themselves, even in extremes of poverty and unprivilege, to be in some remote way fathered by gods, soared to fever pitch. In the streets they bawled for Ashne’e’s death, for the spike to be driven into her womb, and howled too at the gates of Amnorh’s palace, for they fancied themselves tricked and had been given the power of revenge.
A party of soldiers, the mob behind them, strode into the Palace of Peace, their mailed feet ringing in the corridors. Two of them came to the room where the girl lay and entered a little uneasily. She was, after all, a sorceress; she might turn into an anckira when they touched her. It was said she had devoured her own child.
But she lay quite still. The torch glare seemed to shine right through her, as though she were made of alabaster.
She had not waited for them.
The soldiers carried out the corpse, nevertheless, and showed it to the people. A pyre was roughly but enthusiastically built in the Square of Doves. The populace dragged out willingly items of furniture and clothing to solidify its structure. Ashne’e’s white body was carried by a grinning baker to the top and slung down naked on the heap. Torches were applied. A black column of smoke towered into the lightening sky.
The mob broke open wine shops and became drunk. When the charcoal struts collapsed, they ran again to Amnorh’s palace and tossed blazing brands over the wall into the trickster’s court.
• • •
“My lord,” a man shouted, “the trees at the wall are on fire. The gate will go next. Once that’s down the mob will surge through, and the house guard can never hold them.”
“Is my chariot ready as I asked?”
“Yes, Lord Amnorh.”
&n
bsp; The servant hurried ahead of him into the courtyard. The dawn air was already thick with smoke and the charred smell of burnt wood. Outside he heard an unmistakable crowd noise.
Amnorh mounted the chariot alone and took up the reins of the skittish team. He felt a certain bleak satisfaction in himself that he could turn his back so completely and promptly upon the entire sum of his power and wealth and leave it to the flames and the greed of the Dortharian scum.
“Aiyah!” Amnorh cried to the team and drove them along an avenue of smoldering feather trees, straight toward the gate. His own guard scattered, slaves pulled the gate wide for him.
Torch flare and smoke and mass, and foul stink and an impression of a single creature with a thousand yelling mouths and clawing hands. He plunged into it, the chariot’s bladed wheels spinning, and the foremost rank of the crush toppled and spread before him, screeching. It seemed for a moment the chariot would overturn or at least be halted by the mash of fallen human flesh, but the fleet, neurotic animals, blowing, and terrified by the fire, dashed on and pulled the car after them, while Amnorh slashed from side to side with his knife.
A man leaped in next to him, shouting obscenities, but Amnorh, with a swift half-turn, slit his vocal throat and thrust him out. A severed hand clung on the rail until the chariot’s uneven progress shook it loose. Women wailed curses and agony.
A rush of sweet air, and the crowd was behind him. A few ran baying after him like dogs, but could not match his pace and presently fell back. The chariot was spattered with blood, and his hands also.
The white road spun beneath; gardens and buildings were flung away on the burning wind. He glanced back. A glare lit the dark half of the sky; flying sparks must have homed at last into his tasteful rooms.
The wheels rattled across the great south bridge, and the Okris shone below like clouded wine in the sun’s first rays.
One of the black palace chariots was behind him.
The charioteer, a man in the Queen’s livery, raised his hand and yelled for him to stop. Amnorh raked the backs of the team with his whip and saw flame strike under their hooves. From the mouth of a turning in front of him a second chariot leapt into his path.
“She has my measure,” he thought in a moment of leaden anger, but he pulled the animals around and hurled to the right of the opposing vehicle. The wheel blades churned through their near axle; the car tilted and spilled its contents on the road. “But not quite, my lady,” he thought, “not quite.”
The city streaked behind, and the hills opened like honeycomb on either side. One black chariot was still at his back.
“I should have reckoned on the advent of this day, and planned for it,” he reproached himself.
Between cleft rocks he saw the sudden pearl gleam of water: Ibron far below.
At once he visualized the cave. Could he but have found it now.
“What do I offer you, Anack, to persuade you to reveal your hidden ways to me?” his thoughts whispered with a bitter humor. “My Vis soul?”
There was a bend in the road. A great bird fled up before their coming, and the animals swerved madly at its passage. Rocks struck the wheels and flew off into air. Amnorh felt the chariot give a great lurch, then sky and earth were momentarily juxtaposed, after which there was only sky.
The black car careered to a halt. The two men jumped down and ran to the lip of the road, staring over at the mangled remains of the broken chariot and team caught on the teeth of the scarp some way below.
“Where’s the Warden?” one asked the other.
“The lake. He’ll die just the same.”
“It’s a better death than she would have allowed him.”
The wind shrilled. The burning whip of the wind had beaten him semiconscious. He turned in mindless spinnings toward the great mirror which would swallow him.
At the last instant, a thought—death.
Amnorh struggled with his numb flesh, striving to arrange his body for that moment when it would cleave the water. He took huge gasping breaths at the air.
The impact was of a white hot furnace. His bones seemed to run like molten gold. Stifling ringers probed in every orifice. There was no sound.
Deep below the surface now, Amnorh turned more slowly, a foetus trapped in a womb of inky sapphire.
Death.
“I lie soft,” he thought. “I am no longer a man but a piece of this water.”
A pain flared in his chest. His lungs convulsed uselessly on nothing.
“Let the water in and die.”
But he could not.
There were bubbles lisping upward through the dark; he felt dimly the pull of a new current and let it take him. He shut his eyes, lifting so gently. Presently raw light pierced his lids and stone thrust against his inert body. He floundered like a fish in a net, all instinct suddenly to achieve the light. His hands grasped the stone and air splashed on his face.
He lay by the brim of a great pool, breathing, spent, the terrible spasms of coughing and retching past, and his body a lifeless heaviness containing the pale flickers of his thoughts.
“There is a door. A rusty door. She is all about me. I am in Her entrails like Her egg, Her child. When I reach the door and go through it and crawl out into the cave, I shall be born of a goddess.”
After a time he got to his feet and staggered to the stone wall of the pool, edging along it until he found the door. He pulled and the door gave, but he fell to his knees with the effort and crawled, as he had fantasized, out of the golden tail of Anackire.
• • •
He opened his eyes and saw the narrow pale mask of a giantess gazing down at him, framed by a gold seething of serpents. And he thought: “The face of my mother.”
And grinned, thinking of the Iscaian slut who had conceived him in a wine shop under a minor Dortharian prince. Bastardy had been useful, as Amnorh had realized when he climbed the first rungs of the social ladder. She might so easily have brought forth from a respectable marriage to a hod carrier.
He got to his feet. His wet clothes clung unpleasantly, for it was chill in the cave.
“So you saw fit to save me, Anack,” he called out at the statue, “and now I’m your firstborn. My humble thanks.”
Her eyes bored into him.
“What gifts will you give me, Mother, now that I’m cast penniless on the cruel world?”
He went forward and laid his hands on her fiery tail— a million scales, each a plate of hammered gold.
Experimentally he grasped one of the plates and wrenched at it. How long ago had she been made? Too long—she was in sad need of repair. The plate came away in his hands, and Amnorh let out a bark of wild derisive mirth. Again and again he wrenched. A rain of gold fell round him, and he plucked violet jewels like grapes from a vine.
When he had stripped her as high as he could reach, he made a bundle of his cloak and slung the riches into it.
“So I despoiled you after all, Mother mine. Unwise to take such a thief to your bosom.”
He fancied impotent rage on the white face, and at the arch he turned and saluted her, crazy from the water and the falling gold.
In the dark he moved with inadequate care. The bundle bumped and clanked. This time he had no flint and no guide. He did not reach the steps.
At last it grew apparent to him that he had taken a wrong turning somewhere in the blackness.
He stared about him but could make out almost nothing. He became aware in that moment of the far-off, high-pitched singing note that he had heard before. And, as he moved on in his blind search, the sound seemed to grow fuller, as though several more voices had joined the first.
“Anackire weeping,” Amnorh mocked aloud.
But sweat broke on his forehead and his hands. He moved more quickly.
The stairway was lost to him for sure. What then? Retrace his ste
ps? Somehow the thought of turning back toward the cave repelled him. And the sound, the sound was louder. It penetrated his skull like a knife.
Amnorh turned to look behind him.
There was a man in the passage, distinctly visible against the dark. A man with black-bronze skin and yet pale hair and eyes—even as Amnorh stared the hair and eyes spread and merged like flames; the whole face melted and became Ashne’e’s face. The mouth opened, and out of its serene pallor burst the singing scream of the cave.
His own cry mingled. He ran. The bundle in his hands doubled, trebled its weight—he almost threw it down and left it there, but somehow could not despite himself. The walls bruised him, and colored sparks exploded before his eyes.
Suddenly daylight.
He flung himself into it, blind and moaning, and the ground left his feet and he fell.
• • •
“Wake up,” said an insistent female voice, as it seemed mere seconds later.
Amnorh turned his head and saw a girl kneeling beside him. She had a brown peasant face and too-big, simple eyes.
“I thought you were a devil out of the hill,” she said conversationally. “I went in there once, and there was a light, and I ran away.” She ogled him. “But you’re only a man.”
He sat up. The hot sun had already dried his garments. How long had he lain here with this laborer’s bitch watching him? He glanced apprehensively at the bundle of his cloak, but it seemed undisturbed.
“Are you going to Thaddra, across the mountains?”
“Yes,” he said shortly.
“There’ll be men going there over the pass. Our farm’s just down the slope. Will you wait there for them?”
Amnorh looked at her. It would be reasonable to travel in company. He had no provisions, and an early snow might soon lock the mountains in walls of ice. There were also bandits on the mountain shelves.
The farm was little better than a hovel. A bony cow picked at yellow grass outside, and there was an old man minus eyes sitting like a dried-out insect against the wall.
Amnorh waited in the shade of the house while the girl went about her tasks. The traders did not come. He wondered if she had dreamed them up to keep him here for some villainous purpose, but she seemed too stupid for that. He tried to question the old man, but he was apparently deaf as well as eyeless.