by Tanith Lee
“The portents are sound,” said the High Priest, rising. It was time to leave, apparently. “Sons of the heroes meeting here, at the hub of Vis. If war’s coming, we need such tokens.”
The Thaddrian prostrated himself and went.
If war was coming. A child could tell—did tell, for the games of Anackyra’s children had become factious, the lower streets loud with those objecting to playing Free Zakorians. War, that curse of men. And this a war worse than any. Zakoris in exile had become a ravening demon. At length she would try to tear all Vis apart for vengeance, and if she won her battles, not one stone would stand upon another, not one blade of grass remain that was not black with fire or blood.
The Lowlanders did not shirk. They had triumphed before. Besides, did not the goddess teach that the soul lived forever? What odds if a man died in the flesh? Death was only the sloughing of a skin. Such philosophy had made them passive long ago, and now reckless, and pitiless.
Passing through the temple, he touched the goddess’ golden scales with his lips, loving the idea of Her, and sick and tired of men.
• • •
A distant storm, low and faint, murmured over the mountains. The transparent lightnings were thinner than watered milk, but now and then they would catch the surface of fluid—stagnant rain held in a broken cistern or some accumulative pool. On the river too, they played, lighting it as once the street torches had done, the lamps of temples and boats, and the tall windows.
Dead Koramvis, smashed in bits, lay at either side.
He had left the chariot back a mile or more, tethering the zeebas—he had insisted on zeebas for his journey, unused to the flimsy chariot-animals, not wanting to risk them on rough going.
Why he had come up here he did not altogether know. Now, with all done, maybe it was an urge to escape. His father had known such feelings, trapped here in his glorious disguise, Amrek’s man.
Rarmon had briefly wondered if he would know his route about the mined streets, Raldnor’s genes reminding him. But, considering the state the shock had brought it to, he doubted even Raldnor could have found the way to much.
Only the river, the Okris, was a sure landmark, smeared fitfully with the lightning. A huge bridge had fallen into the water. On the cracked and upheaved pavement, vegetation had had more than twenty-eight years of chance to grow. Here and there, some building still stood in portions, a tower, a colonnade—but the weeds and the vines and the trees had fastened on these too. There were wildcats lairing; he heard their cries.
When the wind blew, powder ran down the lanes, more than dust, the gratings of marble. Rot came from the river. Metal lay rusting. The whole city rusted like a broken sword.
He walked awhile, then stood and looked across the river.
When movement came, off to his left, he turned without haste, drawing his knife. He would have expected bandits to lair here, with the beasts. But the ring was burning. He hesitated. There was no threat, only strangeness. Beyond a shattered arch of pallid Vis stone, there was another arch like a shadow, also shattered, but black. Under the second arch, someone. . . . A girl.
He went toward her slowly. There was no need for slowness, he could not break the mirage, like a web.
All around it was night, but in the second arch, daylight.
She was not looking at him. She was drawing water from a well. Young, thirteen or fourteen years of age, lovely with her youth and with some other thing. Lowland hair and skin. When she had filled her jar, she set it on her hip. She raised her head, and so her eyes. And meeting her eyes in the mirage, which she had not allowed to happen in the corridor at Olm, he knew her and cried out, so the heart of the hollow ruin felt his voice.
13.
A QUEEN HAD RULED over it once, before the history began that was remembered. Ashnesea, from whose name such other names had evolved as Anici, or Ashne’e. It felt old as the earth. It had seen so much. The splendors of legend, the decline of its people, conquered or cast down, the persecutions of the Vis, the ultimate persecution by Amrek. It had been occupied, garrisoned by men who hated and feared both its inhabitants and it. Then a messiah walked over its black stones, and it saw the beginning of the overthrow of the Vis, the Lowland Serpent, waking. And the first strike of the Serpent’s fangs.
It was a ruin still, the Lowland city on the Shadowless Plains, and it had no name, if it had ever had one.
Through its decayed walls animals yet ran in and out, travelers penetrated and departed as they wished. Everything had changed, but it had not. Entering the undefended gates, one would still be overpowered by a sense of enormous age and enigma.
• • •
Haut had been intending to make for one of the two or three sizable Lowland towns now flourishing on the Plains, even Hamos, maybe. Then, lying in his tent at Elyr, waiting for the girl to come in and pleasure him, he had considered, if she were good, he might keep her for himself. He would free her first, of course, so there would be no irregularity to annoy the Amanackire, binding her only by love of him. Then she had come in, and he had seen her hair, and her eyes, and next the Shadow of the goddess.
When he regained consciousness, she was gone. He went out, shivering, to determine if she had ever existed. His servants and the drover slept, but she sat by the guard kalinxes, watching the sheep.
He went over to her and when she did not deny him or strike him dead, he kneeled to her and begged her pardon.
Thereafter she rode in a cart with an awning which he purchased at the next village. Sometimes, he asked her what she wished, but she only smiled. However, the smile was enchanting, and considerably better than a flung levinbolt. In the dust, her shadow was now only a girl’s. His servants, Vardians like himself, respected her blondness currently revealed, and assumed his care of her was prudence, prudently copying it.
To Haut, the ways of avatars were familiar from stories. The Lowland War had occurred before he was born, but was recent enough for the new paint on the tales to have stayed fresh. It was still an era of wonders. More than unnerved, he was excited to be included in it. In Vardath, too, where priestesses walked and talked with lions, and the telepathy of near kin was fairly frequent, it was simpler to remain easy with the prodigies of faith.
Crossing into the Lowlands, Haut became aware of their destination. She did not tell him, he merely knew. He was a little disappointed, for the ruined city offered scant business to him, and, he would have thought, scantier fame for her. But it went without saying he obeyed.
He did not warm to the city, standing darkly brooding in its shallow valley. That was no surprise either. But numbers of people still dwelled there, and that was a surprise. There was even a venturesome Xarabian quarter, intent on trade. They had revived one of the marketplaces, and re-awarded it its antique Lowlander name of Lepasin. The houses round about had been shored up and repaired. It was the most cheerful area of the ruin, giving more than a semblance of life, and here the Vardian took rooms looking out on the market. On the far side of its terraces, two arcane palaces kept one in mind of decay, but the rest of the slope had gone to grass. The last of Haut’s sheep could be pastured there, and sheltered in the overgrown courts by night.
• • •
With the day, women began to gather at the ancient watering places, carrying their jars, lending to the morning a further normalcy.
There were still many of mixed blood in the city. Not so long ago it had been their only refuge, when they learned they did not suit either with the Vis or the pale races. The true Lowlanders for the most part were gone—to Plains towns such as Hamos or Moiyah, or away into the Vis world now wide open to them. Those who remained here were of that outer kind, pure of blood, yet more tender of spirit. They were many, but proportionally few. The Lowland people had found themselves. Mostly, they were not as they had been. Or rather, they were exactly as they had been, eons past.
When the girl
appeared in the Lepasin, the groups of the industrious and the idle made way for her. Even here, deference was paid to the Amanackire, and from her coloring she could be no other.
When she went toward the old well, two or three women hurried across to her to set her right.
“Young mistress—don’t trouble with that. It’s dry.”
“Come to the well on the South Terrace, lady. We’ll show you.”
The girl paused and looked at them. It was clear she had heard them, for she smiled a little and half inclined her head. But then she went on up the steps to the well. Framed by its shattered arch, she stood as if in thought or daydream.
The women conferred. They were mixes, and did not like to belabor their point. They waited under the steps for her to see for herself and come back to be shown the working well the other side of the Lepasin.
All about the moving market was astir with sale and barter, but near at hand there was already some interest in the Amanackire maiden at the dry well.
A young half-Xarabian man left his brother to mind their booth of painted earthenware and vegetables. He brushed through the knot of women now gathered under the well. The Lowland girl had caught his fancy. He walked up the steps until he was beside her.
“There’s been no water in there since my father’s time. Didn’t those daft pigeons tell you? Let me take you to the other well.”
“Wait,” she said gently.
For a moment he was about to answer, then he clapped his hand to his head, inside which he had heard her. His half-blood had made mind speech a rare incoherent thing. To receive so strongly thrilled him. As the hero Raldnor himself had once done, he fell in love with a woman for allowing him one moment’s sheer telepathy.
When she lowered the bucket into the well, he let her do it, unprotesting. When the bucket came up, she dipped in her jar.
He had been looking at her, not the bucket, but sounds alerted him. He looked at the jar, then, and saw it was wet.
Under the steps, the women had seen too. One exclaimed. They gestured toward her.
Then she offered the jar to him.
“Drink.”
The word—but it was not a word—stood bright as glass in his brain. He found he was trembling as he reached and took the jar and brought it to his mouth. Then the trembling stopped and he let out a roar.
Heads turned all about.
The young man was in an ecstasy of incredulous delight, almost fury. “It’s wine!”
People came hurrying, questioning, calling.
“A trick!”
“Magic!”
The girl stepped aside, and let them lower and raise the bucket for themselves; taste, vociferate, pour away, lower again and raise again and taste again and shout at each other.
The noise grew into hubbub.
Watching from his window that looked out across the market, the Vardian, Haut, felt himself also begin to tremble once more. He had known the well was dry, the Xarabian landlord had explained that. Haut heard the cries. He understood she had not required his presence, but now he felt impelled to go into the Lepasin, to become involved in what was happening.
It was part of the repertoire of magical religious conjurings intrinsic to his continent, especially to Shansar. The symbolic metamorphoses: A staff or a sword to a snake, air into fire, the blasting of trees into stone, or the bringing out from stone of water, the changing of water into blood for a curse, and into wine for a blessing. As with the rest she had shown him, he was ethnically at home with it. Yet something now made him want to taste the wine, and perhaps to weep.
When he had pushed beyond the door, one of Haut’s servants caught his arm.
“You know what’s done, sir?” Haut nodded. “They’re trying to buy the wine from her.”
Haut laughed after all, his commercial bone tickled.
You did not buy miracles.
• • •
The excitement and coming and going about the well of wine went on until the heat of noonday. The activities of the market were suspended, or carried on half-heartedly. Whoever came new to the scene was told. The dry well did not run dry.
As for the girl, she sat by the well on the topmost step, quite composed, gazing into the faces of those who approached, or away across them all. It was as if she waited, but whether for some sign from the crowd, or from within herself, or out of the sky, was not certain.
Those who knew or had discovered Haut belonged to her, sought him.
“Does she never speak?”
“She doesn’t speak aloud. Just within. She’s Amanackire.”
“Where did she come from? Over the sea?”
“My land? No. I found her in Lanelyr.”
He was a celebrity, since he accompanied one. He stretched and basked, not minding it. The wine was yellow, very clear, a Lowland vintage. Everyone had drunk the wine. He had drunk it. Perhaps he was altered.
Slightly astonished, he found he was comfortably dozing on his bench, his back to the wall. It was very hot. Something so strange was happening, but it was quite acceptable, a perfect fit.
The Lepasin was packed like a cupboard. On the upper terraces they reclined on their sides over the cracked stone and bleached grass, under makeshift parasols. People sat in windows and doorways. A handful had climbed the ruinous facades of the two palaces. Haut could even see the noble bearded faces of some of his sheep peering down between the columns.
The sun passed from the zenith.
The girl rose from the top step of the well.
They watched her as she walked down, and across the market. A vast number got up, unbidden, unrefused, and went after her.
• • •
She walked about the ruined city, through its scoured shells and dusty streets.
Twenty or thirty paces behind her, the crowd followed. At any spot she seemed to wish to traverse, where sections of masonry might have collapsed and blocked the way, young men, usually headed by a blond Xarabian, would run ahead with yells and laughter and the fume of dust, to design her a path.
She seemed to know history well.
She walked to the house that had once given shelter to a man called Orhvan, who in turn had sheltered there Raldnor—and, unwittingly, the traitor Ras. She went in at the door and through the round hall alone, and out again, and on. She moved into the upper quarter to the house once belonging to the Ommos, Yr Dakan, but did not enter. The Zarok-pillars outside had long since been crushed by mallets. She crossed the city to the stagnant palace from which the Dortharian garrison had held the Plains, rung its curfew bell, planned its rapine and sadism, and where, on the night of Awakening, it had died screaming in its blood at Raldnor’s word.
She entered the long cold vaults of this palace and lingered. Only a few accompanied her there, to see her and to see her safe. Men seldom ventured into the building. It was reckoned unlucky by the mixes and the Vis, a thing of pain and sorrow to those pure Lowlanders on the edge of their kind.
There were a few other places she visited. Another house that Raldnor had occupied. The makeshift forge where the first Dortharian sword had been seared with a crude but passionate emblem of Anackire, and still hung on a post, rusting now. The street where they said Raldnor had slain a huge white wolf.
The sun lowered itself on golden chains.
The crowd was footsore, some elated and chattering, some losing the thread, wondering why they had followed her, what she was that they should have done so, the little slight figure of a young girl, who never looked back at them.
The shadows were long spills of cinnabar when she led them again into the Lepasin. The black broken column-shafts of the palaces streaked a carnelian sky, darted with purple birds.
Those persons who had remained in the market had cleared their booths for the night and gone away. Only here and there vigil was kept by a lighted lam
p. Lamps had been woken also in the windows round about, where watchers leaned to look forth.
The girl walked to the northeastern terrace and up the steps of the undry well. The glow of the western sky edged her, so she also glowed against the dark stone.
A huge stillness balanced between heaven and earth. The birds had settled, no wind blew. The sunset hesitated.
Something was about to happen. It would be impossible not to know as much. The Vis in the Lepasin afraid and voracious, stood on mental tiptoe. The Lowlanders felt an aching of some old wound of the heart.
The girl lifted her arms.
Haut the Vardian, sometime drover of all kinds of flesh, purveyor of sheep, slave-trader, experienced the floating sensation known in the prayer-towers of the Sister Continent, where the soul could loosen in the body, letting go. All around, the crowd swayed, giving up concentrated emotion into the air. There was a sound now, an unheard sound, like the plucking over and over of a single noteless harpstring.
The girl seemed to contain fire, an alabaster lamp—her hair stirred, flickered, gushed upward, blowing flame in a wind that did not blow.
The crowd groaned. Not fear. It was like a love-cry.
What came next was sudden.
Light shot up the sky, a tower of light, beginning where the girl stood, or had been standing, for either the intensity of the light made her invisible, or she had herself become the light. For half a second, then, there was only the light. Then the light took form.
The form it took was Anackire.
She towered. She soared. Her flesh was a white mountain, Her snake’s tail a river of fire in spate. Her golden head touched the apex of the sky, and there the serpents of Her hair snapped like lightnings, causing lightnings.