The Shore of Women

by Pamela Sargent

  Birana struggled as the other man dragged her toward a couch. She bit his hand, and he howled as she broke away; he struck her, and she crumpled to the floor, senseless. There was no hope for us even if they discovered Birana’s true nature, for they felt only hatred toward the Lady. I remembered how some in Truthspeaker’s band had cursed the Lady before dying.

  I fought for breath. “If you don’t fear the Lady, fear my band. They will come here and…”

  “They cannot save you. After we have taken what we want from you, we shall wait until we see signs of them. They will not expect us to attack them in a shrine, and we’ll take what they have as well. Let the Lady save you if She can.”

  Birana was still, and I feared she was badly hurt. Her body was limp as the other man pushed her aside with one foot. “Kill him!” the brown-haired man shouted as he stepped in front of her. “Then we will share the boy before he dies.” I saw her hands tighten into fists, although the stranger did not, and knew that she had heard him.

  The man holding me released my arm as he reached for the stone knife at his belt. In that small moment, I saw my chance. My fingers jabbed at his eyes. He cried out and dropped his knife. I grabbed my own knife and struck as another knife streaked past my head. The brown-haired man was coming toward me, and then he fell, knocking his head against the floor. Birana’s small hand was around his ankle.

  My knife found the throat of the balding man. There was a look of surprise on his face as I struck. I do not know how many times I stabbed him, for it can take a man long moments to die.

  I had nearly forgotten his companion. Birana crawled toward me. She picked up Tal’s spear, stumbled to her feet, and began to pound at the back of the man on the floor. It was a foolish way to fight. I saw him roll over and pluck the spear from her as easily as he might have taken it from a child.

  I grabbed my spear then and hurled it at him as he found his footing. He staggered back, his fingers around the spear embedded in his chest.

  BIRANA

  Arvil was covered with blood when he came to me. I could not watch when he pulled his spear from the dead man; I had covered my ears to stop the sound of the man’s moans while Arvil waited for him to die.

  I screamed as his hand reached for me. I screamed again, unable to stop, and he slapped me, then dragged me to my feet. My legs shook; he caught me and bore me to a couch.

  “It is over,” Arvil said. “You’re safe. I did not mean to strike you, but you must not scream.”

  I began to shake violently. “Don’t,” I cried as he held out his arms. “Don’t.”

  “You are safe now. Please. You helped to save my life.”

  A sob escaped me.

  “Cry if you must,” he said.

  I coughed, but no tears came, and then I began to shiver violently. “You did well when you tripped that man,” he went on. “You have a brave spirit. But beating him with the spear was not wise, for you gave him a chance to take it from you. You should have thrust it through his back before he could get up.”

  “If this is what we must do to live, I can’t bear it.”

  “You must learn to bear it. If a man means to take your life, you must take his, or be prepared to run from him forever.”

  I glanced at him, then looked away from his bloodstained clothes. “You said we would be safe here.”

  “No man would expect an attack inside a shrine. These were evil men, and they must have believed, when they saw us, that we would be easy to overcome. It is better that these two will prey on travelers no more.”

  He got up and began to gather his weapons and theirs, putting them on a couch, and then went to the bodies. “These are good coats,” he said in an oddly steady voice. “We can use them.”

  “Leave them!” I cried.

  “We must take what we can. Our journey will be hard enough.” He began to pull the coats and trousers from the bodies; I hid my face.

  He put these garments on the couch with the weapons, before covering me with one of the coats. I lay down, unable to stop shivering.

  Arvil leaned over me. “Birana, you must steady yourself. We cannot stay in this shrine. There may be other men who dwelled with these two. They may search for them when they do not return.”

  “Others!” I clutched at the coat.

  “I do not think there can be many—five or six, perhaps, no more. I was on the plateau when their band was destroyed, I saw how few escaped. But they could be as dangerous as many men if they’re like those who attacked us.” He strode to the entrance and looked outside, then came back to me. “I see no signs of other men yet, but if they are up there, they may be watching this shrine.”

  I forced myself to sit up. “Where can we go now?”

  “It is I who must ask you. An enclave lies to the west, and we would have to circle scavenger territory. We cannot go north, and it is said many bands roam in the south. I know little of the east—even Wanderer heard few tales of those lands. Can you tell me what lies there?”

  I knew even less than he. “We know little of those lands,” I replied. “When we built our cities inland, we abandoned much of the land in the east and west to the Goddess. That means we have no shrines there and no cities—even our ships rarely fly over those regions. We left those lands to heal, to allow life to return to them. Once, some of my kind dreamed of returning to them and building new cities there, but we build no new cities. We hold on to the ones we have and hide inside them.”

  “If the enclaves do not know of those lands, you would be safe there.”

  A refuge for me might exist in the east. Such a place would have to be there, or far to the west, safe from men who might betray their knowledge of it in shrines. But I did not know what kinds of dangers might await us along the way, and Arvil knew as little.

  “I think we must go east,” I said at last.

  He helped me to my feet. “Take off Tal’s coat and put on this one. Make certain that the hood is about your head.”

  “But why?”

  “If friends of these men are watching, they will see only two small figures far below. It would be best if they took us for their companions.” He picked up the other coat.

  I was not sorry the strangers were dead, although I felt horror when I thought of how they had died. They had been vicious creatures preying on others, willing to inflict pain on those who were weaker, ready to violate the code others of their kind followed. Yet it was the destruction of their settlement that had made them that way, and women had done that to them. The cities had clearly wanted to implant fear in them, but instead had only freed their hatred and the violent impulses all men possessed.

  The strangers had tied their horses to the trees under which Flame stood. One was a pinto mare; the other was black with a white mark on her head. We approached them cautiously; the pinto whinnied and pawed the ground as Arvil came up to her.

  “We should take these horses with us,” he said. “I hope they will allow us to ride them.”

  I went to the black horse and held out my hand; she bent her neck to lick it. “This one seems gentle enough.”

  Two packs had been tied to the horses. Arvil opened each and peered inside. “There’s water and dried meat,” he said. “We’ll have a little food.” He put all of the food and water in one pack before thrusting the strangers’ pants and boots in the other.

  “Take this.” He handed me a stone knife; I secured it under my belt. “Take these also—they’re good flints.” I slipped them into my pocket as he handed me Tal’s spear. “I’ll keep the other weapons. Luck is with us, Birana. These strangers have increased our wealth.”

  To the west, on the horizon, I could barely see what might have been a wall and remembered that the city of Devva lay in this region. I had traveled to that city once, never thinking to look at what lay outside it. Tears sprang to my eyes; I wiped them away quickly.

  Arvil secured our old coats under the pack on the black horse. As I reached for Flame’s reins, he motioned to m
e, then turned toward the plateau. He pointed to a spot near the top of the cliff face, and I was able to make out a thin, dark stream of smoke.

  “We must get away.”

  “Birana, I fear for us. Madness poisoned the two who lie inside, and I cannot know what their companions might do. Other men would fear to follow two travelers and risk facing the rest of their band in a battle, but that may not restrain men who would defile a shrine with blood. When we leave, they may follow us.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Do you have the courage to wait? If their companions look down now, they may believe that their friends are only tarrying here, but if they see us ride away to the east, they may grow curious. I would have us wait and ride when night comes, when the darkness can hide us from their eyes. They won’t know where we have gone, and we could be far from here before they find our trail.”

  He had been wrong about finding safety in a shrine; we might be in greater peril if we waited. I wanted to flee and wondered if I could trust his judgment. He gazed down at me, seemingly waiting for my response.

  I had to trust him; he had brought me this far. “We’ll wait,” I replied.

  We sat down just outside the shrine’s entrance. “At least the enclave will not search for you now,” he said.

  In the aftermath of the attack on us, I had nearly forgotten that more distant peril. “You’re sure of that?”

  He told me then of how he had been questioned and how he had responded. There was pain in his eyes when he spoke of his false memory of my death, the one I had implanted in him. “You did well,” I said when he had finished. “I can see by what you’ve said that your story won’t be doubted.”

  “It was hard to say it, hard to believe you were gone.” I heard the intensity of his voice. His feelings toward me were strong, and I was frightened by them; I had seen how quickly they could turn into rage.

  “I am puzzled by one thing,” I said. “It seems that only a young one questioned you. I would think an older woman, someone of importance in our city, would have done so.” I frowned as I wondered what it could mean.

  “Perhaps it is because I had spoken to this young one before.”

  I lifted my head. “Before? Are you sure?”

  “I remember, because she has the gray eyes of my guardian. She spoke to me when I first came to this shrine, after I fled from the plateau. She spoke to me and she vanished, and then another aspect appeared and called me to the enclave to be with Tal.” He sighed. “It would have been better for Tal if I had never found him again.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling that my heart would burst through the bones of my chest. There must have been several young women in the city with the blond hair and gray eyes Arvil had mentioned, but I believed I knew who his interrogator was. Laissa had spoken to him. I had imagined that she was indifferent to me, and that had been painful enough. Now she had become one of those actively seeking my death. I felt more grief now than I had when I learned the city would show me no mercy.

  A memory returned to me then, one I had long forgotten. I was in Laissa’s rooms. I could not have been more than four or five; someone must have taken me there, since my mother usually left such tasks to others. Laissa had gone into her own room to fetch a toy, and then I heard a movement behind me and looked up.

  A child was standing there, with Laissa’s gray eyes and her wavy golden hair. I knew he was a boy and, although I had never been so near one of his kind before, I was not afraid. He did not speak but gazed at me for a long time before touching my face lightly with his hand. I remembered that I had smiled, knowing he would not hurt me, and then someone—maybe Laissa, maybe her mother or some other woman—had pulled the boy away and had ordered him back to his room.

  Laissa had a twin. It had been a fact of no importance, easily forgotten when the boy vanished from her life. Now she had tried to use her twin against me. I did not know what her motive could be, or how she had found herself entrusted with such a task. She had, when she began to avoid me, started choosing friends among those whose mothers were prominent in our city’s life, but I had never thought of her as ambitious in the usual sense; she only wanted to be accepted, or so I told myself. She would change when she grew older; she would remember her old friend and turn to me again; she would know that I was one who truly cared for her.

  She wanted to be sure that I was dead. She could not be acting alone without someone on the Council to guide her, but she was willing to carry out the city’s wishes. She would see me dead in order to get whatever favor or reward she might have been promised.

  I thought of Hasin. I had pitied the little boy, had not minded when he thrust his small hand in mine as we walked about the camp. I had felt a bit of warmth for him. Perhaps he had evoked the memory of the boy in Laissa’s rooms.

  For a moment, I no longer cared if the men Arvil feared found us, and then I raised my eyes to Arvil’s face. He was staring toward the plateau, on guard against any sign of activity there. I had seen the same worried look on Laissa’s face. The resemblance pained me; yet, at the same time, I was moved by it.

  His eyes met mine; he suddenly reached for my hand. “Your soul calls to me,” he said. “Can you reach out to mine?”

  He had misinterpreted my gaze. I withdrew my hand from his. “It’s only that you look much like someone I knew.”

  “A man? But you have seen few, and only Tal was like me—so my old band told me.”

  “Not a man… someone in the city.”

  “Did you know the one who spoke to me?”

  I looked down, then swallowed hard. “I’m not sure,” I said at last.

  “It is strange that her eyes were so like Tal’s. Tell me, Birana—what was it like for you inside the wall?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I had a vision there of a room where I lay on a couch, with Tal beside me on another, and we were bound in silver threads. Then shining claws put a circlet on my head and I saw no more of that place. This was after I had betrayed you and had spoken your name, when the Lady inflicted Her tortures on me. It was then that I began to know the Lady was not what She seemed.”

  I knew the place he spoke of; my cheeks burned.

  “I saw only that place and the room where I entered, and then I left the wall. What is it like inside the enclave?”

  “The wall surrounds our city, as you know, but we don’t dwell inside it. We live in the towers and dwellings at its center, but there is much land around them. It isn’t like the land out here—the grass is tended, and we have gardens of flowers and trees in our parks. A shield you cannot see protects us from the weather, so it is always spring or summer inside. We live in rooms inside our towers or houses and can speak to women in other rooms, or even other cities, with our screens, which are like openings that can show you someone far away and through which you can hear her voice.” My own voice caught on those words; all of that was lost to me.

  “Sometimes,” Arvil said, “I dream of a room with a soft white floor, where someone holds me and sings to me. Tal told me it was a dream of my time in the Lady’s realm, before I was given to him. Once, I wondered if I would see that room again when I died and was restored to the Lady’s realm, but now…” He adjusted his hood. “I don’t know what to believe. I see others like you, who have strong magic and who seek to keep us from knowing of it. I see boys like Hasin crying for what they have lost and not knowing what it is. I don’t know why boys are given to us. Surely, if your kind is so angry with us, you could rid the world of men with your magic.”

  “We can’t destroy all of you. The cities need you.”

  “What could you need us for? Why are we called?” He was silent for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed as he grabbed my wrist and thrust his face toward me. “It has come to me. Is it only that you seek your pleasure with us?”

  “No!” I tried to pull away, but his grip was too tight.

  “Is it that we bring blessings to you as you
bring them to us? I touched the bodies of aspects inside the wall, and they have the power to come to us in shrines, although I do not know how they can call our souls to them, but inside the wall, it would be easy to come to us.”

  “Arvil, I don’t want to speak of this.”

  “Did you ever go to the wall to take your pleasure with a man? If you did, why do you shrink from me?”

  He was angry with me again. I huddled against the shrine’s wall. “I never did such a thing. We couldn’t…”

  “Yet there are those who do. Somehow they come to us and give their blessings and vanish.”

  I did not know how to explain this to him; my cheeks were hot with shame at the thought of what he called a blessing. “Those are not women like me who come to you,” I managed to say. “They are the spirits of women who no longer live.” This seemed easier to say than that they were images that had never really existed. “Our magic can call up these spirits and show them to you. No woman could ever seek such pleasures with a man.”

  “You call us to the wall and make us long for ghosts? Do we live only so spirits may enjoy us?” He thrust my arm away. “No, that cannot be the only reason we’re given blessings. You send spirit-women to us so that we will love you as well as fear you, so that our longing for you will make us helpless against you.”

  From what little I told him, he was quick to grasp a deeper truth. I wondered what else he might see, and how it might change his feelings toward me; the more he knew, the more his anger at what we had done to the world would grow.

  “The Headman of my old band was called Geab,” he went on. “He did not think only of his duty to us, but of the pleasure it gave him to have that place. That must be the pleasure your kind seeks—of knowing that others live who must obey you. You let us live to feed that hunger and destroyed Truthspeaker’s band on that plateau because they no longer fed it. Even you would wish such power over me.”