by Tanith Lee
At this moment, she made out, black on black, the form of a woman, standing over against the closed doors which had not opened, about twenty-six sword lengths away.
Udrombis knew who this was. The one who had always been able to get in, anywhere and at all times. Crow Claw. The one who was many years dead.
The Queen rose. She did not attempt to draw on her mantle. She said, quietly enough, “What do you want, old woman?”
Crow Claw shook her head.
There was in the dark a shimmer all about her, so that she had become properly visible, the same as always, ancient in her black and ornaments. She held out her old hand, and from it poured a trail of thick, black, gleaming dust.
It hit the floor, and a spurt of light sprang up, like flames.
From this, smoke columned upwards, blacker than pitch.
In the smoke, a tiny thing, turning and flashing, fiery gold, small as a gnat.
Udrombis stood still, watching. There were tales enough of Crow Claw’s embassies. Being dead now, she must come from the world below. She crossed the unpassable River Tithaxeli, without trouble, and reentered the earth at whichever spot she chose.
This must be, Udrombis thought, a warning of her own death. She had had no symptoms otherwise, and rather than horror, she was prepared to receive and employ the warning. In this way she would have space to do anything she thought needful, before her departure. Death’s kingdom, she suspected, was not precisely as depicted by priests, and the simply religious. But even so, she had nothing to dread. She had lived firmly in adherence to the tenets of her class and kind. After all, if Crow Claw had withstood it, she, Udrombis the lioness, would certainly survive the journey. And in that place, it was possible she might be young again, even as young as twelve, her age when she had married Akreon. Thinking of finding him, himself a young man among the dead, she did not hanker to remain above ground.
The golden gnat flickering in the smoke had grown larger.
She saw now it had a shape. It was—a bird.
This seemed dainty at first, this tiny delicate thing, passing in and out of the post of smoke.
But now it had enlarged again, and so went on enlarging. It was not a sparrow of the aviary or garden. It was, in miniature, an eagle.
It soared and stooped, it circled. The size now of a house cat—she saw it had gripped something in its claws and pulled it from the smoke. Now it hurtled free into the ceiling—it was large as a dog, and its wings expanded, touching the rafters. In its grip was a sun disk.
Both eagle and disk, both swelling on and on, seemed made all of gold. They glittered, blazed. And the eyes of it, the apparition, were molten.
Surely this could not be a forecast of Death?
The beak was like golden steel. It parted and let out a bellowing scream.
Huge now, the size of the room, it spread the sparkling pinnions of its awful wings, and dashed straight at her, bearing the roof upon its back.
She heard its harsh rushing, the boom of its wings. She smelled its poultry smell, the stink of old blood, the cold spice of the upper airs. Its feathers struck her face, her breast, spun her. She dropped down on the bed. It felt of metal, every feather fashioned on the anvil of heaven. Its claws scraped over her back and the golden disk burnt her with a heat that came directly out of the sun.
When it was gone, the glare of it gone, the noise and heat and stink and terror, Udrombis got up again.
Crow Claw too had vanished away, and only the yellow lamp glimmered, full of oil and undisturbed, before the feet of the god.
11
Traveling to Airis, with the Widow-Queen’s party, took some days. I went with Stabia, in my own litter slung between two horses, and Ermias sat with me. She was full of anticipation, yet bored. Then she would remember her new lover, Klyton the Sun Prince, would soon be at the palace-fort there, perhaps ahead of us. I had gathered enough from her indiscreet sighs and hints—she spoke only of a highborn dalliance—to have guessed. My feelings I cannot describe. Who has ever loved very young, and seen the lover go willingly to some close friend or enemy, will understand.
In turmoil I rode towards the mountain. And all about, Stabia and her women, Udrombis and hers—they said the Widow-Consort was not quite well, no one knew how, she was so strong—and several others thought appropriate to the journey. Needless to say, Glardor’s left-at-home wife came too, but not Elakti. She must have been with trouble persuaded from it, for we had already been told, Amdysos was to race again, and this year Klyton, for the first, had been chosen by the lots.
Along with us went the summer baggage. A favorite bed, chairs, dishes, ornaments and clothes, instruments and embroidery stands, and even one of the lighter loom-frames, in parts, for Glardor’s blonde wife liked her weaving as she liked her food.
My own baggage was slight.
The days were all dust. The land went up on the left hand, to hills and forests, from which shy, affronted deer sometimes looked down on us. To the right descended a plain with skirts of barley and wheat. There had been a giant she-pig hereabouts, some years before, but she had disappeared, and no one claimed to have killed her. Currently there were tales of enormous birds, whose wings spread broader than the height of three men. They had been seen fighting above the Sun god’s shrine, and feathers fell like spears of iron and gold. Having been gifted with one, I hid it and kept quiet.
By night we were put into tents hung inside with soft perfumed draperies. Stabia was often alone with the Widow-Queen. Even I heard a joke or two, softly murmured. But Ermias said, decidedly, they were now too old for any such nonsense. Love-desire was for the young.
She, almost thirty, had put in her corner of our tent, a pink soap-stone Daia, on a little stand. Every night, Ermias offered wine to her. Once Ermias reached a peak of pleasure in her sleep—or some other way—and cried out. I knew the sound, and pretended I had not heard, as usual. My pillow was wet. Unlike my Maiden, I made no noise over my crying.
The palace-fortress was rocks, with large stones stuck upon them, plastered only to the front a ripe fruit yellow. The columns were red as rust, but a tower ran up, and the walls were notched for shields, and for slingshot, arrows and spears.
We were there five days before all the princes and men had come to join us. Nine days before the sacred Race of the Sun.
I sat playing my sithra. I had made a new song to him, my brother that I must not love as I did. But I gave him the name of the Sun himself, so I might sing it, over and over, never mind who went in and out of my stony little room.
“Is that the Daystar’s dusk lament for the Sun? How sad it is!” cried Ermias. “One would think you knew. You’re a true artist, Calistra.”
But I recalled how she had been vicious when I was a child, and jeered at my playing.
When she saw the tears on my face, she came to me, cuddling me in her warm arms. She plied me with dates and sweets. It was not her fault. Why should I expect her to refuse him, when I would have died under the wheels of his chariot?
Somewhere in the town, the women they called the Spiders of Phaidix, were spinning the Web for the Race. I knew nothing of it, or barely, everything was spoken in a code. It was sacred, one must not say too much. But now, as Ermias tried to console, I saw I had walked through a web in that disused room. It clung about my unfeeling silver foot. I did not fathom any omen.
Outside the narrow window, Airis rose, green and brass, to a violet pane of sky. One saw the Daystar often, morning, noon and afternoon, for the air was very clear. Eagles wheeled over. But they were only birds, seven foot of wings, no more.
When I did not go to dinner that night, the first night he was at the fort, he sent me next day a present.
It was a brooch in the form of the Daystar, gold-washed silver, as usually she was shown, with the Sun’s rays behind her hair, and a tiny mirror in her right hand, this one of dark jade.
His letter said he was sorry to think I might be ill. He hoped I would, by that evening, be better
.
Perhaps I was a spoiled child, who thought, by avoiding the social dinner again, I could make him come to me himself. But at Airis, the hall was much smaller, and crammed by nobles, dogs, servants and slaves. Traditionally they roasted the hunters’ kill at the central hearth. Fat splashed, flames spattered. Scents of meat and perfume and the beeswax candles and the oil of lamps rose, and hung in a thundercloud under the blackened ceiling. When the lights were bright, the room seemed all eyes.
I had been afraid enough, these alien women around me, watching. Stabia with her perhaps-kindly hawk’s green stare.
To sit so, packed in, boiling and stifled, and have him there, not even able to look at him, as a forward woman would—I could not bear it.
The second night, I kept to my room. And the third. Nothing was said. Not by Ermias, who, enraptured, crept away after the feast—to be with him.
After the noon meal on the fourth day, there was an upheaval from my slave and Ermias in the annex. Unannounced, Stabia swept in on me. Though padded with her fat, she had a presence.
When not sitting to read or play my sithra, I would pace slowly, endlessly about. Twelve or more years of sitting kept me now, even when not at exercise, on my feet.
She slapped together her hands.
“So, you’re not sick.”
Not knowing what to say, I said nothing.
Stabia pointed to my chair. “Sit down.”
“No, madam—you must sit.”
“That’s better. Always recall, manners before all things. At least until one is a friend.”
I blushed, and she sat in my chair. She waved me to the stool, and I accepted it. She watched me closely. She said, “You move like water flowing. In a slave-market you’d be worth a few coins, I can tell you. What do you think you are? Don’t know. I’ll help you, then. A beauty and a rarety. The Consort herself—oh, I don’t mean that one, Blondie, I mean Udrombis—has told me you are her treasure. After the first night you came to the Hall, she said to me how pleased she was, you were worthy now of a Sun King. You should put faith in her. She’s a being of the highest order. Now, why don’t you come to the hall here at night?”
“I’m—I find it—I—”
“You’re scared as a rabbit. Poor fool. Look at you. Give me your youth and half your looks, and a quarter your grace, I’d have the place on its knees. Learn to see in your mirror, Calistra. What metal is it?”
“Silver, madam.”
“Electrum’s better. You shall have one. Study yourself. Gods don’t give you a gift to see it pushed under the bed like the night-pot.” She took a candy from my dish, ate it, and took another. “Two are all I’ll allow myself when visiting.” She said, “All the court knows what Klyton’s done for you. If you shut yourself away, you shame him.”
I stared, astonished. “But—”
“Listen to me. A woman is an ornament in this world of ours. More than that, naturally, but we disguise it. He has made them notice you, and now you make it as if he came to table with his latest war trophy left off. They ask why. Was it dishonorably got? Is it worth less than appeared. Is he a cheat. What is it—do you hate him?”
“Hate—who?”
“My son. My only son. Klyton.”
I felt the blood ignite in me, up the column of my body, from my loins to my heart to my forehead. Even my hair seemed alight. But I stared her out. She let me do this, then she nodded. “So it isn’t hate. What would you do for him then?”
Everything lost, I tossed my head. “Die for him.”
“Good. By the God’s own Knife, I began to doubt you had the ichor of our house. But if you’d die for him, then to come to supper is nothing, is it? Eh? Well, answer.”
Despite myself, I smiled. At this, Stabia smiled too.
“No, madam. I didn’t understand.”
“Oh, of course not. Now you do. You’ve had no proper instruction. This other thing …” she paused, and ate her second sweet, licking her fingers to get all. She said, “You’re too young for it yet. I don’t hold with this bedding at twelve, fourteen. Some are fit for it and some not. Girls now need longer. Flowers bloom at their own rate, and when you force them they lose their petals to spite you.”
I was at sea. I gazed into her face, but now she looked out of the window at the mountain.
Stabia said, “He wants you, you know, just as much. He has that curly hussy out there because her hands have been all over you. How do I know? Amdysos sent him off to the groves. That was the first time for him. Seventeen is late. I’ve taken notice, since then. It was the Consort put me wise.” Dumbfounded—he wanted me?—I waited. “Let him be patient. And you. In a year, maybe. You’ll need to be careful, but I’ll see you have a woman who knows what you should do and take. Yes, you’re royal, but the most you can hope for in the end, my dear, is some lesser king of another country. And he won’t quibble if he doesn’t have to take a dagger and skewer to open a woman of the Sun House.”
Was I shocked? I doubt it. She spoke as freely as some of the Maidens, coarse and to the point. The sentiments for which, twenty years before she might have been killed, were not startling because they went against nothing in me. I wanted what she told me I might—incredibly—have. The long-term future, with its banishment and sordid little marriage to another, in this fire, meant nothing.
“While you’re with us, you and he—why not. You can be my daughter. Under my wing. That will make it easy.”
Returning to this now, I see that shocked I should have been. For Stabia went against her true goddess in this one matter. Suggesting that Klyton and I might be lovers, however carefully, however much unknown, was as far from the rules of Udrombis as the earth from the sky, To the Widow-Consort, a princess must remain a virgin before marriage, as surely as a prince should not.
I think therefore someone had unlocked for Stabia the closet of coming time, a very little way. Searching, I do not see that scene, nor guess how it had happened. But half the court, half the continent, played at magic. Someone had read some portent for her, perhaps, and telling her, Stabia had known a truth.
She had no shadow, yet somehow, without shouldering her fate, she was aware that in this year where I and Klyton would wait, all things must change. And she herself sail down the River of the Dead, leaving him behind upon the raft of mortal life.
12
Now I have come to that place where I must speak of something sorcerous, harrowing, unthinkable. It is not I do not know how to tell it, for I saw it, and need only relate what I saw. Nor is it I think you will doubt me, because if you have read so far, we have trusted each other, a little. No, it is only some things can never be consigned to paper, nor even to the stone and clay tablets of the priests. Some things are too big, and too inhuman. They should be written once in fire, or water, and then left to smolder out, or wash away.
Yet, I cannot proceed unless I speak of this, from which after-events hang like jewelry chains from a hook of bronze.
Thus:
The caverns at Airis, sacred to the god, run through one side of the mountain’s base. There had been mining there two hundred years before, until signs from the god forebade it.
You descend the plain on the western side, into a lower plain, a valley, where the mountain veers up into heaven, and everything seems above you, the glinting eastern dot of the shrine, and south, the defence tower of the palace.
Here, on the plain’s floor, was a stadium, where at this time, for three days—one of the Sun god’s numbers—horse races were staged, wrestling and combats with swords, shooting with bows, and other masculine arts. But there were shows also about the stadium, racing dogs, lions who danced, and men who ate fire. All around, a market was set up, selling horses, the white sheep of the mountains, who have horns like the crescent moon; silks and scents and foods of every land known under the Sun. There were even little botched-up temples of many foreign gods. Bandri was there, whose priestesses, black and white, all with padded bellies, sold amulets and statues t
o women pregnant, or desirous of being so. And Lut I heard of, too, though I was not allowed to go, represented by a herd of men and women who, it was said, were freaks, one having an enormous head, and another a tail, and two girls, lovely as swans, but joined at the waist with only two legs between them. Although apparently, a pair of all the other things were located below the waist, or so Ermias, horrified, mentioned.
I felt quite sorry for Ermias now. I was kind to her. Then again, I was not frequently alone in her company, but in with Stabia’s flock. Klyton, despite my—now desperate—nervousness, I had seldom seen in the fort, and then he never turned my way. He was most often with the chariots and horses at the stadium.
Before the vast doors, Torca stood, torch in hand, looking down into the valley.
From here, the two-horse chariots assembling on the racing track, seemed of a comfortable size to pick up in his palm. From their metalwork shot flares of light, and off the bridles and headstalls of the horses, trails like sparks. There was, at the Airis Games, no chariot race but this one. They would take one turn, pacing around the track, then come out on to the slope that led to the base of the mountain, where they must pause for the litany.
While the Race was run, a period of, perhaps, half an hour, or a little less, or a little more, the crowd in the stadium, which included the Great Sun himself, would stand. Not until the first and winning chariot burst from the mountain’s gut, upon the opposite ridge, could any man, or woman, sit.
He had thought of the girl. She had been told to see to herself, having extra padding put inside the silver feet. And she might need her cane, and the arms of her Maiden and her slave.
Strangely, Torca wondered how this would be for her when she had grown old. She would not, surely, be able to do it then. But he did not think she would live much beyond forty years—the deformed from birth seldom did. Even he had now, with his leg, no long expectations for himself, and each year was a bonus. He had been careful to let her know none of that.