The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  “Makkatt!” one of the men shouted. It was their name for the volcano.

  We turned in our saddles on the uneasy horses, and stared back to the light in the sky.

  One of the village boys, who had come with us, began to yell and weep. The nearest bandit struck him into silence.

  It was very quick. The sky was red, then orange, then a filthy yellow, then bloodied and muddied back into darkness, leaving only the half-glow low on the horizon, which was the burning villages. The sound came late to us, rumbled deeply, and was gone.

  I looked at Darak, and his face was hard and shut. But I knew behind his eyes, as behind mine, the thought of the village would not be still.

  Their goddess abandoned them, and the wrath of the mountain came in her wake.

  I remembered the altar of Evil, so far away reality had almost faded it. I remembered the voice in my skull: You are cursed, and carry a curse with you; there will be no happiness.

  * * *

  With a silence on us now, and the reddish lamp still alight behind us, we came up to the trees an hour later.

  A rider near Darak made a sound in his throat like the barking of a hill-fox, twice, then again twice, and was answered from the trees. Three or four men untwisted themselves from the shadows, and ran up. I saw the glint of knives, but it was all formality. They must have been able to see us for hours.

  A few moments in talk, gesticulations backward toward Makkatt, then we were going on, through the trees, among high jutting rocks. Three more halts and signalings with sentries—elaborate birdcalls and passwords—the gaudy toys of dangerous and well-organized men.

  Then the ground seemed to open in front of us. I looked between the rock, and saw, carved through the hills, a long ravine. It was about four miles in length and perhaps a mile across, and overhung by the slopes on every side. Trees leaned over it, pines and staggering larches. Grass grew in the bowl, and pasture land where there would be brown cattle and wild little sheep. On the east side a waterfall smoked down, and there was other smoke also—and the glint of cluster upon cluster of cooking fires, outside and around the lanes of leather tents.

  In the black of night, the downward track was hard and treacherous. Men cursed and horses stumbled, and little things ran away skittering, with bright eyes.

  * * *

  Nearer and nearer the fire blur, the smell of food and huddle and closeness. There seemed no way out now up the steep sides of the ravine.

  The track widened out. We were on level ground.

  Darak swung down from the horse, his men following his example. Boys came and took their mounts away to horse pens up against the escarpment, but Darak’s horse was taken somewhere else. The place jumped in the firelight, unsteady and uncertain.

  I sat still on the mule, waiting.

  Darak turned abruptly and came back to me.

  I looked down at his face but it was all one with the moving, twisting light. I could not be sure what his look or his eyes said to me.

  “They’ll put up your tent for you over there, near the waterfall. I’ll send the girl to take care of your wants—a sort of servant, but she won’t say much about it. If you need anything, get word to me. You’re free to do as you like here.”

  “Oh, yes?” I said softly.

  His narrow eyes narrowed further until they were glittering slits.

  “Yes.”

  There was a silence between us, through the noise starting up all around. Then he said:

  “I’ve work to do, things to get done. You understand.”

  He turned, and began to walk away. A tall slight woman with a cloud of black hair came out of the redness ahead of him. Rings gleamed on her hands and on his as they met. He kissed her in full view of me. There seemed no logical reason why he should not.

  Then she led him into a tent with blue eye-shapes painted on it.

  I slid down from the mule, and the uneasy stares of the bandits flickered, heads turned, as I went by them, into the dark, while behind us all, unseen, the burning in the sky went on and on.

  2

  So, I might do as I liked.

  This glorious freedom the king had granted me was like a weight around my soul’s neck. He had brought me here—curious about himself, not me—and now, losing interest, he handed me this strange manumission which meant nothing in physical terms, for I was their prisoner in all senses once I knew their stronghold, but meant at the same moment so much: because, by it, he had disowned me. What then had I expected?

  The long sleeps came on me again, after that night of arrival. I lay still, as I had lain in the village temple, my eyes often open, in a kind of trance. I scared the girl who came with food and coals and fresh water. She ran out yelling that I was stiff, hard and icy as a block of stone, and did not breathe. Perhaps this was true, perhaps she imagined it, but none of the women would come in my tent after that. Not that I missed them, nor they me. They were a wild bitch race, on their own among women, as I suppose all breeds of women are. They fought for their men between themselves, but did not then ride to a fight along with these men. They dressed half the time as the men did, but cooked and darned and bore their babies as if they had no other function except to be female and subservient. They had their own mysteries, and something in me shrank from their bright golden stupidity, and the sedentary glamour of their lives.

  * * *

  The dreams came. The shining rooms, the courts with their elaborate paving and fountains, all empty now. In a vast hall, a statue of black marble, glossy like glass. A man dressed simply, with long hair and short beard. Not here that face which haunted me, which later I had met in Darak. This was another stranger.

  Where was this place, the ruin of my home? I must find it. And here I sat in the bandit’s tent.

  There was in me then silent anger at myself. The piece of jade lay cool on my skin, but my life was in darkness.

  So the days passed.

  The camp ground was much as I had imagined, pasture dotted with cows, sheep, and goats, an orchard of fruit trees—the leftovers of some old farm, now in ruins, at the southern end of the ravine. There were vines, too, and some vegetable patches. This kind of husbandry was the women’s task. The men hunted when they were not out on other errands, and brought back steaming bloody carcasses with drooping heads.

  There were a lot of people in the ravine, and it was a hotbed of their jealousies and quarrels. Some of these came to me—requests for love-potions and death-wishes, which were not granted. As for their sick, when they thought I might help them, it seemed I could do it. Otherwise, I was powerless. This made me afraid. I was the outcast in their midst. They would turn on me at last and rend me as a pack of dogs rend the lame dog when it falls. I had my enemies already—the girl whose jade I took, the man I had kicked in the genitals, and many more now, angry I had not cast their spells for them. Darak ignored, or did not see, this situation. There was a war over the hills, beyond the plains and the mountain ring and the wide river, in the southern desert regions, whose ancient great cities still stood like monoliths. It was another world to the bandits, that land, but it provided bounty. A caravan was going south, packed with war gear, bronze and iron and some gold. Darak would take this, and then barter it, piece by piece, among the plains tribes for their own smaller battles. Or perhaps he would ride south himself (he had done it before), and come into the mountain towns, claiming to be a merchant, with goods and armor to sell them.

  I knew little enough of his plans. I picked up some gossip as befitted my station as a woman. At night, when he lay in the blue tent, I eavesdropped by the fires; during the day, I listened here and there as I walked the length of the ravine and back again.

  There was a place, high up, near the falling shaft of the waterfall, where I used to climb and sit for hours. Nourished by the water, which broke off in little streams and carved itself channels along the
slope, the trees grew thick and dark green here. There was the sweet sharp smell of pine resin, and scents from the various flowers that pushed through the soil. They showed like white bells among the boulders, changing to reds and blues as they neared the stream. Some grew in the water itself, like filmy lavender bubbles, then hardened into purple on the far side where a little mound of stones stood leaning together. There was a slight fume of water over the spot from the falling spray. It was refreshing in the heat of the day. I used to sleep here sometimes, glad to have escaped the claustrophobia of my painted tent for a new and cleaner privacy, for no one ever seemed to come here. Lower down, where the fall had produced a round pool, the women came and filled their jars or bathed. I could see them clearly, small as dolls, and sometimes a snatch of voices blew up to me, the words always drowned by the roaring water. Below that place, I would look down again, and see the whole of the ravine, the tents, the animals and Darak’s men, wrestling and firing arrows into a target, flaying dead animals for their leather. It looked innocent and homely enough from the slope, perhaps because I was no longer part of it. I could see Darak, tiny and breakable as an insect, go into the horse field and pick out his black, or its white mate, and ride them, wheeling and jumping, standing up on their backs, somersaulting and coming down with sure feet. Darak the gypsy and the showman, the boaster, who needed admiration like food, yet seemed to know his needs. I had seen him closer, as he rode in the horse field, his face laughing, open as a small boy’s, but, as he came out afterward amid clapping and cheers, the inward-looking amusement of his eyes. He knew.

  * * *

  In the middle of the night, a woman screamed and screamed outside my tent.

  I got up, drew open the flap. Two girls, one with a pitch-brand that seared my eyes with its raucous light. Their faces were drawn and somehow angry. The third woman was in the arms of a big, dark-skinned man, one of Darak’s “captains” I had long ago surmised. At the moment her body was arched and straining, her hands knotted into fists.

  “What is the matter?” I asked them.

  The girl who did not carry the torch stepped forward, and I saw her face clearly. She did not look in my eyes but at my neck, from which, she correctly guessed, hung the jade I had pulled from hers. Shullatt.

  “Illka’s in labor with Darak’s child, and things aren’t going well. We’ve come so you can cast your spells on her, and save her baby.” She looked scornful, and her mouth opened to say more, but the screams began again.

  The bandit holding on to the one they called Illka said furiously: “Keep still, you damned bucking mare.”

  “Bring her inside,” I said.

  He ducked under the tent flap and deposited the girl, still arched and wailing, on my bed of rugs.

  I looked at her and her belly was almost flat.

  “In labor?” I asked. “How long has she carried?”

  “Five months,” Shullatt snapped.

  Illka was obviously in agony, almost unconscious, except when the pain brought its automatic responses.

  “I tell her,” the other woman said, “she’s miscarrying, not bearing.”

  “Where is Darak?” I asked.

  “Away.”

  I was not certain why I asked. I felt obscurely that some of this pain should fall upon him, who had helped cause it. But had he been in the camp, the tent with its pattern of blue eyes would have had him, or perhaps another.

  I leaned over Illka, and I could not see how to help her. Her eyes were wide now in pain and fear, but I was another shadow revolving around her agony, without a place in it. She had no faith in the witch.

  “Have you no midwife?” I asked.

  Shullatt sneered. “No.”

  “I cannot help this girl.”

  Shullatt fastened on my defeat with triumph.

  “Can’t help her? Why did Darak bring you here, then, to eat our meat and drink our drink and stroll where you will in our home?”

  Illka screamed.

  I kneeled down beside her. Blood was running onto the floor. I did not know what to do. I put my hand on her forehead, and looked into her eyes. At first there was no response but then, after a while, something stirred between us. I reached down into her eyes, into her mind, and closed a coolness on her brain.

  “No more pain,” I whispered.

  Behind me, Shullatt snapped, “What?” craning nearer.

  But the girl’s face was relaxing, her body, arched for the new spasm, was leveling on the rugs. She smiled.

  The other woman cried: “You’ve saved her!”

  But this was not so: there was not enough belief in any of us to have saved her. I simply held her still and calm in some water of peace at the bottom of the soul, whispering to her of beautiful things. After a while, her eyes slipped gently shut. She turned stiff, and very cold.

  I stood up. The man had gone out again. Birth and the complications of birth were not his province, and he wanted none of them. The two girls were still there, but it was Shullatt who moved and sparkled and was alive with venom. The other was quiet, awed by this soft, fearless death.

  “You killed her,” Shullatt said.

  I stood and looked at her. There was no reason to answer.

  “You killed her,” she repeated. “You put a witch-sleep on her so she had no fight left! She couldn’t feel the child tearing to get out—Darak’s child. Illka you kill, and Darak’s child you kill—why, witch-woman? What is it that makes you so jealous of the gifts he gives?”

  Karrakaz moved in the gloomy tent. Evil would come to me and I would welcome it. What I had done to help the screaming girl and thought to be a blessing to her in the hopeless agony—was that only my self-deception? Would she have lived had I left her to struggle alone? I had my motives, as Shullatt instinctively guessed. Would I cut the forest of green trees down all around him, one by one, in insidious ways, until he had only the blunted faceless tree to cling to?

  The black-haired girl in the tent of blue eyes, how easy it would be to be rid of her. Some drink, some balm, a perfume even. The knowledge of poisons and treachery waited in my brain.

  “Take Illka away,” I said to Shullatt and the other girl. “I have done my best for her, but your goddess of bearing did not want another child as yet for the bandit camp. When Darak returns, tell him. If you have a complaint against me, I will answer it to him, not to you. He is the chief here, and you are nothing.”

  The psychological ploy worked well enough. The thought of Man, the chief, herself, woman-who-was-nonentity, subdued her. She scowled. Her dark eyes blinked in the torch-glare. The other one went to the door and called. Another woman came in, older, and with no expression on her face.

  The three hoisted Illka’s body between them. She had no value now; they could not expect a man to carry her. They went out.

  Blood had soaked into the rugs. I picked them up and flung them outside, and saw, in the faint moonlight, women scurrying together from the tents, like little black rats in the shadows. Whispers: “Illka is dead!” Shullatt would explain that the witch had killed her.

  It had come, then.

  3

  Darak did not come back for three days. Where he was I did not know, but I guessed there might be outposts of his kingdom, lower in the hills, nearer the roadways, and perhaps he had business there.

  During this time no one came near me, except once. No food, drink, or coals for warmth—but this did not bother me much. When I went to the round pool to get water, the group of women there drew off and stared at me, hostile but afraid. They would have liked to stone me and cuff me away empty-handed. Soon they would get the courage to do it.

  On the third day a man came, and said he was going to move my tent higher up, away from the others. He looked slightly embarrassed for this whole episode was the work of the women, and it came hard to be under their influence. Nevertheless, the men liked
me not at all. They were glad things had come to a head and I was to be got out of the way.

  He and two others moved the tent, and set it up beyond the horse pens on a raised barren rock. From here, the rest of the dwellings looked small and bright at night, pressed together like nervous fireflies.

  Soon I left the tent, and went to live in that flower-place I had found, where none of them seemed to come, and where there was water in plenty. I found berries here too, across the streams, behind the stones that leaned on one another, and gnawed mouthfuls of the bittersweet grass, and this was enough for me.

  It seems it should have been easy for me to escape from them. I could have gone by night, up the steep track which was the only safe way I knew from the ravine. Surely I could have got by the sentries; I had learned enough now to know how to be silent. But Darak would come back, and my trial lay with him, and that was the answer to my self-questioning.

  * * *

  And I saw him come back. One smudgy dawn, stars still vivid in the sky, a group of men came riding in, not from the track, but from some passage in the ravine side, at the southern end. They passed the ruined farm, the orchards, and were about a mile away from the tents, when men and women began to come out, and run across the pasture to them.

  Darak stopped. He seemed to be listening to what they said. I thought I saw him laugh. Then he rode on, and they scattered away from him. He came quite fast into the camp, and I could tell he was angry, little stiff black ant, on a black ant pony. Not angry for me, of course. Angry that such trivia should interfere with his plans.

  There was more conference then. He ate, sitting outside his own big tent, and while the women brought him food and beer in great earthenware jugs, the complaints against me came and went. The hysteria was out of all proportion to the event, but it is their nature to turn on the different one. They must all be sheep.

  Finally he stood up, and hit some man across the face. This must have been an insult against Darak himself. While the bandit sprawled, Darak turned, and began to walk toward my lonely pitched tent on the rock. I could almost have laughed then, seeing him go in, then come out again, and wave his arms furiously, and men go running in every direction across the ravine to search me out. But my heart began to drum, for he came toward the fall and began to climb the rocky slope as if he knew instinctively where I must be.