by Victor Poole
"I would have killed him for you," Delmar said suddenly, "if I had been there." He looked at her, and there was blazing heat in his eyes.
"Well," Ajalia said shortly. She pulled at the rope, and led the donkey into the street. They had been standing at the corner of two streets, against the edge of a long building.
"What did I say wrong?" Delmar demanded, chasing after her.
"You can't say things like that," Ajalia told him firmly. He looked at her, aghast.
"Why not?" he asked. He looked as though she had crushed him into shards of crusty goo. Horror and regret were in his eyes.
"Because," Ajalia said, wiping at the tears that had started, unbidden, into her own eyes, "you will make me cry, and then everyone will know I am in love with you." She sniffed, and marched with business-like verve through the street. She kept her eyes ahead on the street; the shapes of the houses were blurring with the wetness in her eyes. She heard Delmar hurrying to keep up with her; when she had gained control of her face, she glanced to the side, and saw that he was smiling with glee.
"What?" she asked sharply. He giggled, and she tried to be angry with him, and failed.
"So you killed your first master," Delmar prompted. He looked at Ajalia, and then swept forward to take his place ahead of her. She grinned in spite of herself; he was catching on much faster than she would have believed possible.
"Yes," she agreed. "And my second master." Delmar looked around at her; she saw that he couldn't help himself.
"How did that happen?" he asked, curiosity bleeding out of him.
"I'll tell you some other time," she said.
"No, now," he said.
"I'll cry," she explained. He pursed his lips.
"Fine," he acceded. "So what happened then?" Ajalia saw that he was catching the trick of talking and walking without looking back at her; she felt strangely pleased with him, as though she had fashioned him as a child, and was watching him grow into a man.
"You learn very fast," she told him.
"I want to know what happened," he said without turning. Ajalia smiled.
"In between masters," she said, "I reflected on the mistakes I had made."
"What mistakes?" he asked incredulously.
"In my choice of masters up to that point," she explained. Delmar could hardly restrain himself from stopping, and shaking her; she saw this.
"You don't have choices," Delmar said laboriously. "You're a slave."
"If you say that again," Ajalia said calmly, "I will never speak to you again."
She walked past him, leading the ass, and turned down another way towards the dragon temple. Delmar stopped in shock, and watched her go. She never looked back at him; she thought that he would guess she was testing him somehow. She told herself that Delmar was too good to be real, and that he would turn to be stupid after all, like his parents. She told herself this to keep from feeling the shards of anger and pain that were already crawling into her chest cavity. She did not want to think of why she was so upset with him; when he told her that she could not choose, she saw that long litany of sacrifices she had made, to become what she was, and to keep herself from turning in on herself, from becoming narrow and evil, like her mother had been, and like Lim had become. Ajalia was fiercely proud of her purity; she protected it, as a great bird protects an egg, and Delmar's clumsiness, and the coarseness of his understanding, offended her.
She wound quickly through the streets that lay beyond the main roads of Slavithe, and the little donkey Pudge trotted obediently behind her. The clop of the jennet's hooves made a soothing ratt-at-at noise that filled up the narrow maze of alleys. She came near the tenement where she had rented a room on that first night in Slavithe, and on an impulse, she went towards the door.
A plain post lay fixed outside the house; she lifted the bundles from the back of the donkey, and tied Pudge's rope to the length of wood. She was in a poor section of the city, and she thought that if someone did steal the little jennet, she would enjoy the diversion of hunting her little donkey down through the city. Anger at Delmar, at his words, made her fingers itch; she wanted to punch someone as hard as she could.
Ajalia slung the bundles over her shoulder, and mounted the steps of the tenement. She remembered suddenly that she had met Chad here, and she laughed.
She climbed to the floor where her own little room lay, and unlocked the door. The bundle of white keys she had relinquished long ago to Card, but the small black key, and the other baubles that she carried on her person, were yet tucked away in her clothes. She had begun to dress after the fashion of the Slavithe people. She had not yet determined her role in the drama that was to unfold shortly, and so she had begun to maintain a studied neutrality in muted browns, and plain sewn tunics. She was not willing to cut her hair to blend in, but as the young single women of Slavithe wore their hair long, and tied back, she had not yet encountered much difficulty in passing as a Slavithe woman.
She had not seen women with long hair when she had first come into the city, but she had found, the longer she lived in the white stone city, that the young women were kept mostly at home, or were sent out to work in the farms that extended in deep rivulets against the harsh desert.
Ajalia pushed open the metal door, and stepped into her room. The little room was cozy, if drafty. She thought that no one had come in, since she had last locked the door, but a funny tingling at the bottom of her neck told her she was wrong. She turned, and looked down the stairs. She could see nothing, but she was sure that the old woman was there, watching her. She felt the presence of the old woman in the room. Ajalia set her jaw in an angry line; she wanted this room. She had not been willing, when she had first come, to negotiate a peace with the old woman who kept the tenement, but now she was beginning to feel restless, and angry. She wanted to use the room; she wanted it to herself, and she wanted to create a haven of peace and quiet within its walls.
The small bed was shoved still against the wall, and the big stone bowl, which she had left behind, was the only other item in the room. Ajalia's back itched; she thought that the old woman would try to kill her, if she dared.
"Old mother," Ajalia called softly, looking around the room. She did not turn to face the open door; she was sure the old woman would appear there, if she waited. "Old mother, I have come back," Ajalia crooned.
"Where is that nice young man, your lover?" the old woman croaked. Still bundled in what appeared to be endless layers of rags, the old woman peered up at Ajalia through crooked eyebrows.
"I've come to take my room from you," Ajalia told the old woman. The old woman laughed, and spread her hands wide.
"It is already yours," the old woman said in a caressing voice.
"Philas is gone," Ajalia told the old woman. "He has fled to Saroyan, to escape the war."
The old woman's face grew still; her eyes were bright, and she studied Ajalia as a bear studies a rival.
"There is no war," the old woman said slowly. Ajalia said nothing. The old woman stepped into the room, and began to move in a gradual circle around Ajalia. Ajalia, more by instinct than in thought, sent her mind deep below the stones under her feet, reaching deeper than that, into the foundations of the earth. She remembered what the slim leather book had said, about the level of the breast, and the drawing of the light into the groin, and when she had fixed her mind on the interior of the earth, she secured two thick ropes of golden light in her hands. She imagined herself holding these cords of light, picturing her hands wrapped closely around the molten ropes. Ajalia watched the old woman step cautiously around her.
Now that Ajalia felt the power of the deep earth pulsing through her bones, thudding like music in her veins, she looked at the old woman, and saw a kind of mouldering gray shivering all about the old woman's shoulders. Ajalia saw that the old woman was not as young as she seemed. Ajalia thought she saw echoes of seven lives stretching out behind the woman, seven different faces layered, one atop another, young women's bodies, and mature f
igures of thickened women, all lying together in a string. Out from the old woman's chest, and stretching through each of the seven figures, there ran a long, careful rope of blue-black light that was thick, and bubbled over here and there with pustules that were like glimmering warts of marbled darkness.
"You're a witch," Ajalia said to the old woman, and before the old woman could extend the black cord towards Ajalia's heart, Ajalia killed her.
She had never killed this way, without anger. Always in the past, when she had found herself in conflict with a man who sought her freedom, or the death of her virtue, she had reacted in a blind rage. She had struck from a red-hot place, and later berated herself for not finding a more peaceful way. But now she saw the old woman, what she really was inside, and she moved without thinking, or feeling anything beyond a sense of instinctual disgust.
Ajalia killed the old woman with her knife, but the golden lights were still in her hands, and when she stepped close to the old woman, her fingers closing like a shadow around the hilt of her knife, she felt one of the glowing cords of golden power sink deep into the blade. Ajalia saw the knife, shining like a shard of the sun, pierce into the body of the old witch, and travel with a journey of straight movement through all the seven shadow bodies beyond.
Ajalia withdrew her knife. Without thinking, she tore the remaining rope of golden light up, towards the blue-black line that tied the shadow bodies together, and twisted the bright rope around the pulsating cord. The knife was yet in her hand, grasped close, and wet with blood. Ajalia raised the knife, and cut through the golden and the black lights.
She thought for a moment that she had killed herself; the severed lines of color emitted a flash that smelled like decomposing fish, and the explosion of energy blinded Ajalia for a long time. She was afraid at first that she was going to faint; her mind toppled, dangerously near the edge of a kind of blackness. She stood still, waiting. She could feel still the pulsating waves of power from the earth beneath; her vision cleared, and when she was sure that she would not fall, she stepped away from the body of the old woman.
The rags and dirty old clothes on the witch's back seemed clean after the vision Ajalia had seen of the old woman's soul. Ajalia took up a layer of the cloth, and wiped the blood from her knife. A sick feeling, like the tearing away of an angry scab, was in her lungs, and a sharp ache moved behind her eyes. She thought of the Thief Lord, and of what Delmar had said, of his father coming to Slavithe to kill the witches.
Ajalia thought of her mother, and she sat down on the floor with a shock that sent a dull pang all along her legs. Her mother, she realized for the first time in her life, had looked strangely like two women. She remembered that her mother's face had changed sometimes; when her mother was angry, her face was broad along the jaw, and strangely stretched, like a toad preparing to eat. But when her mother had been sad, or melancholy, her face had seemed narrow somehow, pining. The eyes had changed shape as well. She was sure that her mother had been a witch.
Ajalia gazed dully out of the window of the tiny room, and reflected that she could, after all, have had some training by example in the use of these shining lights. She looked down at the blood on her hands, and tried to find a scrap of mirth in the situation. She could find nothing funny at all about where she was now. Delmar was somewhere, putting his foot into his mouth in disastrous ways, and Ajalia was due home any moment to the dragon temple. She looked at the body, and at the strange bloodstains that were soaking now into the rags of the old woman's attire.
She would, in the past, have thought of taking the body to the ruling person; she imagined herself standing now before the Thief Lord, and presenting the body of the slain witch. At this thought, a smile flitted over Ajalia's face. She stood, and picked up the old woman's body.
ULLAR, MOTHER OF BAIN
The old witch was absurdly light; Ajalia lifted her as though she were a child, and carried her down the stairs of the house, and into the back courtyard. The middle-aged mother that Ajalia had met when Chad had followed her down to her room was in the courtyard, hanging washing on a line. The children, Ajalia was thankful to see, were not present. The woman looked up at the scrape of Ajalia's feet; her eyes grew wide and round, and her mouth dropped open.
"I knew it," the mother said in triumph, coming to Ajalia, and peering into the dead old woman's face, which was hanging upside down near Ajalia's arm. "I knew she was a witch!" the mother whispered to Ajalia.
"How did you know?" Ajalia asked. She wanted to be surprised at the middle-aged mother's lack of chagrin at her gruesome burden, but somehow she was not.
"They're fighting again," the mother said. "The priests in Talbos, and our witches."
"I was afraid," Ajalia said mildly, "that you would suspect me of murder."
The mother began to laugh, as though Ajalia had claimed to be the spawn of some god.
"Oh, my dear," she said to Ajalia, merry tears in her eyes, "you and I cannot kill witches. Oh!" she laughed, putting a hand to her side, and shaking her head in delight.
"What is to be done with the body?" Ajalia asked blankly.
"Was she in your room?" the woman asked. Ajalia nodded. "Give her to me," the mother said, reaching around the witch's frail body, and lifting it adeptly over her shoulder. "We'll pretend that I found her," the woman told Ajalia. "My name is Ullar," she added, giving Ajalia a friendly nod.
"You seem composed enough," Ajalia observed. She looked down at her clothes, and saw that she was bloodied up thoroughly. She held in a sigh.
"I'll lend you some clothes," Ullar said kindly.
"Thank you," Ajalia said. "Did the witch own the building?" she asked, glancing up at the tenement.
"No," Ullar said. She had carried the body to the ground near the garbage pit, and now she began to strip the layers of rags and shawls from the old woman's body. Ajalia watched Ullar work with a strange feeling of being in a dream.
"Does this happen often, to you?" Ajalia asked Ullar.
"No," Ullar said cheerfully. Ajalia watched the middle-aged woman drag blackened and filthy shawls from around the old woman's limp arms. When Ullar had removed each set of clothes, she dropped them perfunctorily into the garbage pit, where they hissed and bubbled furiously.
"I'm sorry," Ajalia said, "I don't understand what is happening here." Ullar patted down the dead witch, and made a victorious exclamation when she withdrew a pair of metal tongs, and a pouch of money from within an inner pocket.
"Would you like to share?" Ullar asked, proffering the coins. Ajalia looked at the woman doubtfully.
"I thought you would be upset," Ajalia offered. She took the pouch, and examined the money. The coins were normal Slavithe money; Ajalia looked over them, and returned them to Ullar. "You keep it all," Ajalia said.
"Squeamish," Ullar said matter-of-factly. "Help me lift the body," she said. Ajalia put her hands below the witch's shoulders, and lifted her off the ground. Ullar tore the dirty cream shift down the side, and slipped it out from under the frail body. Ullar nodded, and Ajalia lay the witch down again. The naked body was strangely child-like in the evening light.
"Check the seams," Ajalia said. She had seen, in the glimmering light, that the shift pulled gently to one side. Ullar handed the filthy garment to Ajalia, and Ajalia drew the tiny knife from within her clothes. Ullar observed the instrument with guarded approval as Ajalia slit the seams along the shift. Within the second seam, she found a thin fold of paper, and a long scrap of leather that had old Slavithe letters burned into each side. Ullar watched Ajalia put the paper and the leather into her clothes; Ajalia saw that the mother's mouth was drawn into a deep frown.
"Can you read that writing?" Ullar asked Ajalia.
"No," Ajalia said. "I'll take them to the Thief Lord." Ullar's frown relaxed at once; her eyes seemed to melt open.
"It is not allowed," Ullar said.
"Witchcraft?" Ajalia asked.
"Reading such things," Ullar told her. "The words corrupt the soul, and c
reate dark ties to strange powers."
Ajalia nodded, but a heavy weight settled within her heart when she thought of Delmar, and of the books he had concealed without the city walls.
"Your Thief Lord is wise to dispose of such things," Ajalia said.
"I would not bring such a thing before him," Ullar said fervently, "for all the world." The woman's eyes flicked to the garbage pit, where the last of the witch's rags were decomposing rapidly into steam. "You can put it in," Ullar offered. "I would not tell."
Ajalia shook her head.
"It is not safe to hide these, or destroy them," Ajalia said. "I have great business with the Thief Lord; he will see that I mean well." Ullar watched her, and Ajalia saw that a kind of snide curve was within the middle-aged woman's mouth. Ajalia knew that Ullar believed the Thief Lord would destroy her, for having such a thing. "I have met with the Thief Lord for much less," Ajalia said. "He has promised me asylum here." Ullar concealed a chortle, but Ajalia felt the waves of scorn flowing out from the mother's heart. "I will win over the Thief Lord," Ajalia said again.
"You cannot win," Ullar murmured, but she was no longer looking at Ajalia.
"Why?" Ajalia asked clearly. Ullar looked up at her, and Ajalia saw that fear was in her eyes.
"You cannot know," Ullar said.
"Why?" Ajalia asked again. Ullar looked at her, but said nothing. Ajalia wanted to know more of this woman; she wanted to know why Ullar was so calm at the gore of death, and so methodical in the disposal of a corpse. "Tell me why I will lose," Ajalia repeated firmly. Ullar looked at her, and Ajalia felt as though she were being weighed in some secret balance. Finally, Ullar shook her head.
"No," Ullar said. "You are a child." Ajalia watched her face in the falling light. She could never have said why she wanted to argue with this woman, but she felt as though Ullar concealed some vital secret, some part of what she would need to know to effect the Thief Lord's dethronement, and Ajalia hungered after such knowledge. As Ajalia stared at Ullar's serene face, she was forcefully reminded of the man in the curious shining armor, who had carried her through the mountains with the young man with wild hair.