by Tanith Lee
He paid her no heed.
• • •
The priestess Eraz became aware that another had noiselessly entered the Sanctum, beyond the curtain of golden scales. Eraz looked, with her inner eye, out into the unseen space. The persona was immediately recognizable, not only for itself, but for the infinitesimal secondary element which was now in the midst of it, fainter than the warmth of a dead coal.
It was presently the time when the luminary fires of the temple burned low, and when the curtain before the goddess did not rise merely at a footfall on the sky-borne dragons of the mosaic. These were, too, the hours between midnight and morning known in the ancient mythos of the Shadowless Plains as the WolfWatch. The hours of the insomniac, of doubt and self-dislike, and, sometimes, of death.
The Lowland priestess moved from behind the curtain and into the body of the Sanctum. She crossed to the spot where the Princess Val Nardia stood, her head bowed, alone and in silence.
“Do you seek the goddess?”
Val Nardia faltered.
“I seek. She isn’t to be found.”
“Yes. Always.”
Val Nardia turned her face not simply downward, but away.
“I’ve sinned. She’s not for me.”
“If you’d thought Her not for you, you would not have come to Her, Val Nardia of Istris.”
“I’ve sinned—sinned—let me confess it, and give me a penance.”
“That is the way of your mother’s people. Anackire awards no penance, no suffering. The symbol-stretching of Her arms which are retribution, destruction, torment, the inexorable curse—these are metaphysical. We inflict our own torture upon ourselves. We chastise ourselves.”
“My sin—”
“Your sin is only sin because you will have it so.”
“No. Help me!” Val Nardia cried, looking up, catching at the woman’s robe.
Eraz said, “The help is in you. You must help yourself. What we have done is the past. We reiterate the deed, or we dismiss the deed.”
Val Nardia gasped. “You hate me,” she said abruptly. “Your kind hate all of us who have the blood of Vis. I shouldn’t be here. Your goddess, not mine.”
Eraz did not glance at her, her eyes were lamps. She seemed not to be human.
“Yours, if you will accept Her. You don’t need my comfort, Princess. This is what we try to teach you. You need only Her, and to know the power within yourself.”
“You disdain to listen. My crime—”
The golden eyes returned to her.
“Search firstly within yourself. Then, if you fail yourself, you may come to me.”
Val Nardia flung away. She ran across the mosaic and, reaching one of the obscured exits, ran down it into the ground.
Eraz paused. She became in her mind two persons, as she had trained herself to become. The first said to her, This girl has no fortitude to bear these things. She understands nothing. Eraz answered, Each of us has the fortitude to bear all things. For centuries, my people believed they were the victims of this earth, ordained to suffer and to perish, finally to be expunged. But at last they were shown another way. They believed then they would be world-lords, as in the depths of the past. This now is the path they would tread. Val Nardia is in the hand of the goddess. She must come to know this. But I think, too, her destiny forbids it.
And far off, she was aware of Val Nardia, hastening through the under-temple, wrapped in her black pall of shame, and the tiny new-lit candle at the core of her, blacker to her than all things else.
• • •
Storms tore through Istris, dry storms without rain. There began to be some fears of drought. Then water speared from the swollen cumulus and the bright summer hail that flamed where it struck stone or metal.
In the last quarter of Zastis, came a Karmian feast day, the Festival of Masks. The marble walks were still running with rain at sunfall, but the skies had been polished of cloud, from the apex sheer to a magenta sea.
The city began to resound like a beaten drum, flaring into mobile lights that ran frenetically everyway. Vanes of colored glass hoisted on the street torches turned the boulevards mulberry, amber, indigo, the shades of Aarl, till they were smashed. In wild costumes the richer rabble and the more adventurous well-to-do paraded themselves, concealed by the represented faces of sun and moon and Red Star, beasts, demons, and banaliks.
The palace itself, seldom demure after dusk, had blazed up like a bonfire, cacophonous with music and buffoonery.
There were rumors the King might go abroad in the city later, suitably hidden in a mask of gold, that old escapading streak getting the better of him, as the tales told it had so often done before. What beggars would win horses tonight? What thirteen-year-old virgins boast, ten months from now, that Suthamun Am Shansar was responsible for the wailing thing bouncing on its springy womb-chain?
There was another rumor too. It had started somewhere around the harbor. Kesarh Am Xai had come back, without the permission of his King. Even before the rain stopped and the sky hollowed, this theme was current everywhere. The King himself had heard it reported, and furiously laughed it to scorn.
“Who is Kesarh Am Xai?” Suthamun had demanded. “Am I familiar with the name?”
As night climbed, the drink poured like the rain and lovers coupled in the fever of the Star in doorways, on roofs, on bell-hung carts, kissing through masked lips, starting up or down into faces of sunbursts and orynx. Drunks had visions. Some spoke of having seen the Prince Am Xai here or there. Of having shared a beer jar with him in Lamp Alley, or discussed pirates in the lower city. Or he had gone by with a swirl of his cloak and two or three of his soldiers, on not-so-secret secret business somewhere, but masked like all the rest. This was a new apparition. Generally, Istris saw ghosts at the Festival of Masks. Numerous times the hero Raldnor Am Anackire himself had driven his chariot along its roads, red-haired Karmian Astaris at his side, and men had fallen on their knees and tipsily fainted. Of course, it was quite likely someone had been dressed to fool the populace, some dark-skinned man donning white hair and a fair imitation of the old Dortharian scale-plate dragon mail. And there were many red-haired women now, from the mixing of bloods.
• • •
Jornil, the Oldest Son, First Heir to the King, did not recall from whence the idea had initially sprung. He thought it his own entirely, and it appealed to him at all his various levels, of vanity, of mischievous caprice, of envy and of idiocy.
In the beginning, the elegant clothes of the marvelously sanguine red dye had required some alteration. Kesarh was leaner at waist and pelvis than Jornil, and longer-legged besides. When the necessary amendments had been carried out—somewhat under the pretext that the discrepancy was in the shoulders, which would need widening—the notion was introduced that Suthamun might not wish to see his heir in the apparel of one disgraced.
Jornil was careful of his father. The other heirs were children; it was not so much a chance of being cast off, or even of a loss of privileges. It was more some incoherent thing that had to do with the stronger personality of his sire, which had cowed Jornil from the cradle, and helped, with the obverse cushioning of Karmiss, to make him what he was.
So, he did not put on the prized clothing. And thus began to look for some opportunity to get away with putting it on. Then, as the festival approached, the second notion was introduced.
In fact, one of the re-fitting tailors had supplied the first caution against wearing the clothes. The suggestion of assuming them on the night of the masks came from a girl, cunning not only in bed. Both had been paid to do this service for the Prince Jornil. The paymaster was a fellow with loosely curling black hair, Vis, but lighter-eyed than most. Only the girl recognized him as a man who had previously attended the Prince Am Xai, and she had the wisdom to forget it.
The rumors that Kesarh had been spotted in Ist
ris amused Jornil greatly. When he left the rowdy feast in the palace hall, and went to change into Kesarh’s red clothes, he needed his sun-ray mask to hide his excitement.
Since manhood, he had been sensitive to Kesarh. Kesarh had seen to it, in some off-hand, under-played fashion, that he should be. Now, to become Kesarh for a night was awesome, a challenge. On top of that, to carry on his father’s legendary tradition, haunting the city in disguise, added its own sauce to the jaunt.
Suthamun would go mad, if he ever learned the truth. But Jornil, along with nervousness, had gained a total lack of respect for his father’s ability to reason.
When he had on the clothes, he pulled off the sun-ray mask. The mask he replaced it with was quite unremarkable, save that one half was black, the other half white. Pouring back from the crown of it, the wig of thick black hair covered up his blondness.
Jornil strutted for himself in front of a mirror. Then went out, his legs moving in Kesarh’s long stride, by lesser passageways, into an inside court. There he mounted a black zeeba, and his escort of five guards, their mail washed dark, unfurled a small banner, signaled with a fire-lizard.
They pelted out into the city.
It was nearly midnight, and the carnival was in some places escalating, in others getting sluggish.
When the first cries went up—Am Xai—It’s the Prince Am Xai—Jornil grinned hugely and unseen.
He went on grinning a long while, till his jaws ached. He never for an instant questioned why he, who ostensibly had everything Kesarh had not, should be impelled to this, and gain such enjoyment from it.
Inevitably the enjoyment and excitement started to take fire from Zastis. He began to want a girl, and to look about for one he fancied.
Both he and his escort were by now fairly drunk. Coming into a square where the celebration was still exuberant, he thought to dismount and make his way on foot. His guard enabled him to push through. A procession was winding over the square, singing and shrieking, with jugglers throwing fire-brands. He had turned to look at it, when a girl came out of the crowd and fell against him.
Her face was covered by a kalinx mask, but her perfumed hair streamed from it over her shoulders and her breasts, which were almost bare. She was dark, a Vis girl, and she clung to him.
“My Lord Kesarh,” she said hoarsely, “Zakorian pirates killed my brothers. You avenged me, and countless others like me. And I’ve loved you ever since. Yasmais answered my prayers and brought you here, risking the wrath of the King. I’ve followed you for miles, daring myself to speak to you. Don’t send me away.”
Jornil breathed fast. He reached out and thrust aside her mask, as he felt Kesarh would have done. She was pretty. She even closely resembled a girl Kesarh had once kept in the palace.
He whispered something in her ear. She pressed herself to him, exquisitely making contact with every part of him, through Kesarh’s clothing.
The girl led Jornil across the square, his five guard meandering after. They turned into a side street, and then into the courtyard of an unlit dilapidated house.
Already unlacing, Jornil hastened into the dark beyond the door, his breathing like a bellows, and leaned the girl against a wall.
The guard loitered just outside, a vestige of security, mostly persuaded they too might get a turn with the girl.
His head tipped back to drink from the passing wine-skin, the fifth guard choked. The sky was falling on him off the top of the wall, and holding a knife that suddenly replaced the wine in his throat.
• • •
The cart with its streamers and bells raced clattering and ringing through the streets, dragged by three terrified zeebas. When the congestion of people ultimately slowed its rush, and men had climbed up on it to try its cargo, they found only one item.
The body of the Prince Kesarh Am Xai, dressed in red, which red nevertheless did not obscure the multiple wounds. It had been stabbed and slashed, pierced, hacked, practically butchered, until only the masked face remained uncut. Which masked face, when it was uncovered, revealed itself as that of the princely heir, Jornil.
• • •
The night was turning toward morning, but in the windowless room she could not see it, could not see moon or stars, or the Red Star itself. As he had said. Her brother, Kesarh.
And she had only to think this to feel once more his hands and mouth upon her, his body upon her, within her, and the anguished frenzy they had created not once but many times through the brief hours they shared together. Each coupling had exhausted her, wrung her to emptiness. She had not been able to think, to fight anymore, either physically or with her spirit. She had lain beneath him, beside him, curved into the angles of him, pinned fast to the mattress, wrapped in his arms, a comforted prisoner. And no sooner did awareness reclaim her than her stirring flesh sought his as he sought her. Again, no space for denial. It had been no rape. As he had told her, he had used her, and she him. They had tried to extinguish themselves, breaking like waves on the shores of each other’s lust and life. Or so it had seemed to her.
Then he left her, to return to Istris—not as he had gone away, better than that. He had been sure. His sureness and his strength had shone with a fierce dark light in the little dark room and she had not wanted him to go. She had been afraid, for when he was gone, she would be alone. She would have at last the space to know what they had done.
He had kissed her, put her aside, gently now.
“I’ll come back. I’ll take you from this stone box. When I can, when it’s safe for you. Till then, be here for me.”
And he had kissed her once more with a lover’s kiss, so letting her drop back among the covers. He had walked out of the room and away, and she had become for him an accomplishment, set on one side, no longer a priority. Oh, she knew that much.
While for herself—
He was now a colossus, closing her horizons. She had escaped him, but he had pursued her. The goddess of Ankabek had given him the means, and so the goddess had died like a light. Kesarh dominated now. His black intention. His power. Shadow on shadow.
Could it be that, twins, each embodied an opposing principle, as each had been formed to an opposing sex? Val Nardia, timidity, a shrinking from the world. And he, a hunter, a devouring.
Kesarh was evil. She knew it. Had known it since their childhood passed behind them. Cruel, pitiless, some essential atom missing from his soul.
She had struggled so long with this. No remedy had suggested itself. Yet, there was a remedy. She had realized as soon as the other, inexorable realization came to her.
She had attempted to pretend at first that it was not so. But her body, her body which had betrayed her to him, her body mocked her, content with what it had done, and had sealed her to its purpose, and his. For her body was with child. The child of her brother.
Val Nardia considered she had been stupid to approach the Lowland priestess. The people of the Plains were not like the Vis, not even like the races of the Sister Continent, Vathcri, Shansar, but unique to themselves. And pitiless as Kesarh, in their passionless way.
She stood up. Shrinking from the world, she had now come to that crossroads of both the cowardly and the brave, and chosen her direction.
She stepped onto the stool indifferently. She had gone sleepless many nights and was very tired. Using only one hand, she brought the looped end of the scarlet cord dangling from the rafter quite matter-of-factly over her head.
She felt only the slightest apprehension at what would happen. Her neck was very slight. Just so her own mother had ended her life. And as Val Nardia herself, a child of eight or nine, had come into a room and found her, so some other would come into this room and find Val Nardia.
Sighing a little, and with a strange grace, she slipped her feet from the stool.
• • •
Kesarh had sat very late over his wine, then taken t
he wine and a girl to his bedchamber.
The faint stench of the swamp-lake disturbed him, that and the activities of the night which he had no means as yet of knowing. The Festival of Masks had provided him with a drawn dagger, Raldnor Am Ioli had helped place the blade, and the King’s Heir, if Jornil remained true to himself, had thrown himself on it.
The moment Jornil had ordered Kesarh to gift his processional clothes to him, the plan had begun to quicken in Kesarh’s brain.
Raldnor’s men had started the rumors of Kesarh’s return—false, naturally. Rem, who had seen to the tailor and the girl, had also suggested a deserted house. He himself had once employed such buildings, and knew of several about the city, from the days of his brigandage.
Am Ioli’s men had performed the murder. If they had done it. If everything had gone to plan. If. That was the exacerbation of this. Kesarh must wait here in ignorance, must be known to wait here in ignorance. That was everything.
In the end the wine and the girl relaxed him. He fell asleep, a sleep deeper than the center of the land he lay over.
Then, in sleep, a hurricane rent the darkness in his skull.
He woke, crying out, and the girl caught his shoulder.
“A dream—a dream, my lord,” she muttered, trying to soothe him.
He shook her off, reeling up from the bed.
“Not a dream.”
She reached out and he struck her away.
She sank back, whimpering, and he went out and up the stair to the roof terrace. Here he stood in the star-reddened night, the pulses of it beating on him, staring away toward the forest. There was a kind of nothingness inside him. As if some vital organ had perished, and yet he lived.
He did not know what it was, and gradually, forcefully, he thrust it from him. And away. And away.
When he went back, the girl was folded on the floor.
“Come here,” he said. “You were right. It was only a dream.”
She crawled back to him and caressed him until he wanted her and took her. He fell asleep again, and as he slept, Berinda curled against his spine, smiling like a forgiven child.