by Tanith Lee
Watching him climb, so remote and far from me at first, but growing nearer, larger, more real and dominant, I felt as if I called him to me, and could not help myself. He paused at the pool below, looked around, then up. He did not see me. He frowned, and came on again.
I sat down by the leaning stones, and put one hand on them, for the cruel warmth of day was rising, and they were cool still, and hard and secure. I trembled, and my heartbeat stabbed in me, and I wished it were from fear.
I heard his footsteps on the stones, once through water. Twice he stopped, then moved on once more.
Then he had turned the path, and he stood in front of me, against the curdling sky of sunrise. He was dark against that light, but I could just make out his face.
He looked at me and said harshly: “Of course. Where else could you be?”
He moved along the edge of the little streams, but did not cross.
“You find comfort here, do you?” he said.
There was something in his voice and look that part of me cowered away from. I said nothing. I seemed to be drowning in his presence, but there was no help for it.
“They say”—he jerked his thumb toward the ravine—“you killed some girl because she had my child. Brought on a miscarriage with a potion, then drugged her and let her die.”
There seemed no point in speaking, but obviously he expected an answer.
“No,” I said.
“No,” he repeated, “of course ‘No.’ Why should you do it? Shullatt speaks about you as if you were a woman, with a woman’s emotions and spitefulness, but you’re as cool as river clay. There may be wickedness in you, but not a thing as ordinary as jealousy. Besides, goddess, the gods accept only necessities. What they really want, they take without asking.”
I felt the need to grasp at this sentence, cynical, yet deeper than he meant it to be. There was no time.
“Why I brought you here I don’t fully understand. There’s a sickness with the sheep and the cattle, and this apparently is your doing too. They’ll not be happy till you’re gone.”
“Then I will go,” I said.
“Oh, no, it’s not so easy, goddess. You know our stronghold. When I say gone, I mean gone underground with an arrow through you, or your neck broken. Of course,” he added, “if I cut off your tongue and fingers—”
“No!” a shrill voice shouted. “Kill her! Your men want her dead, too, Darak.”
Beyond Darak stood a woman’s silhouette that spoke with Shullatt’s voice.
Darak half turned.
“Who asked you to follow me, Shullatt? I didn’t.”
“I knew she’d be here—the place with the Stones—and I knew you wouldn’t do what we asked—kill and burn her, and rid us of the filthy curse she brought.”
I stood up and blood tingled through me. I must die and burn, because this bitch demanded it. I crossed through the water, and she darted at me suddenly with a knife in her hand. It was her swift moment this time. The blade slit my shoulder, and blood spilled fast as wine into the stream, turning the lavender flowers purple, the red flowers scarlet. I got her throat in my hands, my knee against her side. Fool, she might have thrust me off a thousand ways, but she stabbed again, into my arm, and with the impetus of pain, I thrust her body one way, her head another, and snapped her neck.
It was too quick to think: This is Death I am giving! The impulse came from the depth of me, irresistible.
She lay in the flowers, and my blood dripped on her face.
“You never fight like a woman,” I heard Darak say. “She’d have done well to remember that.”
I felt sick, but I said: “She is taller than me, and weighs more, but fire is a great leveler. Take her body down a little way, then burn it. Show them what is left, and I will go my own way. Do not fear I will betray this place. I have nothing to gain in doing so.”
“You,” he said.
His hand came onto my shoulder. He turned me to face him, and his eyes looked in at mine through the mask-holes of the shireen.
“I can’t see you,” he said. “What are you feeling, now that you’ve killed? Nothing?”
His hand slipped downward from my shoulder onto my left breast, and the heart under it leaped and leaped as if it would burst free of me to lie against his palm. Then his hand slid away. His face was tight and concentrated.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll take her down to the pool. There’s a place near there we use for it. I’ll burn her. And show them. But you’ll stay here. If they catch you on the track they’ll pull you down like a wolf pack. Don’t worry that they’ll come for you here.” He pointed toward the leaning stones across the stream. “That place,” he said casually, “an altar of sacrifice—old as the ravine itself. I’ve heard them say some black god or other still broods here, but that’s tales for children. Good luck for you, you picked this place. Or perhaps you heard them talking.”
“Then I wait here. What then?”
“Tonight we ride south. You’ll come with us.”
“And you will let me free when we are away from here?”
He picked Shullatt up. Her disjointed head joggled over his shoulder. He grinned at me, a grin hard and white as the teeth it showed.
“No. I’ll not let you free, goddess-woman who fights like a man.”
He swung away, and down the path, and was gone.
* * *
I waited. The day was red as blood, or so it seemed to me as I lay in the flowers beside the streams, the scarlet bells brushing my eyelids. I was afraid now, aware that I had killed, and did not care much. He blunted all the edges of my guilt, but I felt guilt at lack of guilt. Karrakaz, and already evil was upon me. I thought, Run down among the tents and they will kill you, and end all this. The clouds above me formed the shape of the Knife of Easy Dying. But I was alive as I waited for him.
I did not even smell the smoke, nor hear them come to see the burning thing, though they came. They came.
He touched my shoulder, and I started back across the sparkling darkness. I had slept, I thought, but he looked at me strangely. Had Darak, too, seen me stiff and still and un-breathing? It was cool, and twilight.
“Get up,” he said, “and put these on.”
A heap of clothes lay by me on the grass—man’s clothes, but small enough that they would fit me.
I turned my back to strip—because it was before him I would be naked.
“Where did you find these things?”
“A boy’s,” he said.
The boots were hard on my thighs, the leather belt cut my waist. He must have been a small-footed boy, with a girl’s waist too—the belt holes ran far around the band. Perhaps Darak had let women ride with him before. Still, there was no doubting this was a man’s gear—the peculiar sheaths with their cargo of spiked knives, the groin-guard under the tunic flap.
“Roll back the shirt a minute,” he said abruptly. “I brought a salve for the cuts Shullatt gave you.”
“No need,” I said.
Impatient at this presumed modesty, he came over and roughly pulled the shirt free of shoulder, upper arm, and breast. It was darkening; I could not see his face. But his breath was sucked in hard. He touched the mauve scars with nervous fingers, as if my flesh were too hot, and might burn him.
“You heal quickly,” he said.
His fingers brushed the jade.
“When you’re ready,” he said, “we’ll go down.”
“Wait,” I said. “How many men are with you? If they see me they will know me.”
“Most of these men come from another place. The ravine men that ride with us set no store by you or your spells. It was the women’s doing, that anger, and they’ve had their sacrifice. They’ll think it’s Shullatt that’s gone with me.”
He turned, and I followed, across the icy water, through the flowers, o
n to a strange new turning, that wound away into the rock where there had seemed to be no opening.
Darkness, and water running on stone, then the starlight, heather tufted slopes, the stamp and whicker of ponies, and men waiting.
Darak turned me to my right. A man brought up a little black horse, which I mounted and could ride properly now without a clinging enclosing skirt. Darak was up and already riding down the hillside. I fell in with the others, feeling as anonymous as they. I pushed the hood of the cloak from my head and let the cool wind thrust back my hair. It did not matter now if they saw me.
I was adrift. The tide pulled me away. The need to think and decide seemed gone.
Through the dark movement of bodies, I saw Darak. I kept my eyes fixed on him. I was in his hands now, and whatever degradation, misery, or pleasure awaited me, must come from him. At that time, this seemed enough.
4
We rode through the night, moonless, from one black place to another. As the sky paled, the first bird and animal calls began, and invisible sentries passed us on. Low in the hills now, I could make out great sweeps of trees to the west. Beyond the last hills on the horizon there was nothing standing up but sky. Everything beyond was flat. The Plains?
We made toward the woodland, and it was not far. By daybreak we were in the trees, and in the new camp. A small river splashed through it over gray stones. The air was moist and green, but the smells of smoke and food, animals, leather tents, and man were familiar enough.
It had interested me that Darak had brought so few men from what I took to be his camp in the ravine. Now I began to realize that this warren, too, was his, and probably others. While he was away in different places, his “captains” kept the inhabitants in order. Odd Darak trusted to their loyalty, but perhaps he had good cause to, or had made provision against any sort of rebellion. There never seemed to be a question of leadership, or any dissent among them.
The riders around me dispersed, Darak being the first to go. He had got me out of danger, but that done, he abandoned me again. There would be new dangers now but it did not matter much. I dismounted and left the horse to graze, glad to walk off the stiffness of riding. I felt easy and unhampered in the bandit boy’s clothes. My legs were free, despite the chafing boots; the gaudy brown and yellow silk shirt with its slightly tarnished gold thread and tassels, the waist tunic which was no more than a leather flap hind and fore leaving the legs free, all the rest of the accouterments and ornaments seemed bright and fresh after the dark red and black in which men’s various beliefs had shut me. Only the mask now, the shireen, was a closeness and a cloying, but there was no help for that.
I walked along the river bank to be away from the tents, and came to large dripping stones with a green fur of moss. I had stopped, listening to the water, when a piercing whistle sounded a few yards behind me.
“Imma!” someone called—it was an insulting pet name among the bandits, meaning “small one.”
I turned. Three or four men had followed me, soft-footed as cats. Now they grinned curiously. Dangerous, but not unfriendly.
“Now what are you?” asked the biggest one, a black man with serpents embroidered on his tunic flaps, no doubt by some admiring female hand.
“Gleer says you’re a boy, and Maggur says you’re a girl,” put in another who had gold earrings.
“And I think you’re a bit of both,” added the third and smallest.
The fourth one—I could see now there were four—picked his teeth idly, leaning on one of the big stones, and leaving the repartee to his friends.
It seemed an uneasy situation. Possibly they would want to find out what I was by personal investigation, and they were cold-eyed for all their dark grinning faces. They too did not like strangeness in their midst.
I knew what they respected, so I said: “Whatever I am, I came here with Darak.”
Their faces altered slightly, less friendly, and less dangerous.
Then the handsome black giant swung slowly around on the pivot of his great legs, and cuffed the silent one with gentle amusement.
“No, Gleer, you’re wrong. A girl’s voice. And girl’s breasts, too. Besides, Darak’s never been a one for boys.”
The gold-earringed man moved a hand up and down before his face.
“Why that?”
It was an easy answer, for I wore the shireen of the Plains tribes.
“I am a tribal woman,” I said. “I may only show my face to my lord. Or I die.”
I had heard the wearers of the shireen were told this to help them keep their modesty.
The black one—Maggur—clucked sympathetically for all of us, and sat down on a boulder. The others joined him, except for Gleer, who slunk off noiselessly. I did not understand their interest, but there seemed to be something forming between us, and I did not move away.
“Tell us, girlie. Does Darak whisper in your ear at night about his plans?”
“No.”
“Great pity.”
Their shoulders twitched, but they stayed still. It was strange, very strange. I looked hard at them, and they seemed to be waiting for something—some signal—that would come from me. I measured them, slowly: the big man; the one with gold earrings; the small one who had a lively, living look about him. Muscles flinched in their arms and legs. Their eyes went everywhere except to me, and abruptly I knew I had drawn them here, and I held them here, though why I was not sure.
“Well,” I said.
Their eyes came back to me, three dogs waiting to obey.
I saw a bow slung over the goldearring’s shoulder.
“How far can you shoot?” I asked him.
He unslung the bow, set an arrow to it, and selected a sapling far off down the river bank. The arrow leaped, flew, and struck home. He was called Giltt, the other one Kel.
It became a contest. Kel ran off and found a wooden target, and they played at it, doing well, or indifferently, and sometimes missing altogether, and cursing. One arrow caught a breeze, went deep into fern on the other bank.
“Let her go,” Giltt said. It surprised me. Arrows were never loosed like that and left to lie.
They looked uneasy. I went across the water, stepping on the boulders in the stream, and snatched the arrow up. Between the green tattered feathers of fern I saw a little mound of stones leaning together. I turned back and stared at the three of them. They looked at me, paler, their eyes slightly fixed.
Another evil place, and I had come to it, and here I had got what I wanted without knowing, the royal bodyguard of a princess of a great house. I shivered. With both hands I snapped the arrow and threw it into the water where the current drew it slowly away.
I crossed, and walked toward the tents. They came behind me, Kel running, for he had paused to get the target from the tree.
The cook fires were alight. Meat sizzled, and a porridge I had seen before, made from nut kernels and honey. I stopped and ladled a little of the brown stuff into a bowl, and a man turned around on me from the hide he was flaying.
“Here you—keep your hands off—”
Maggur’s great fist shot out like a black python. It was only a glancing blow, but the man went over and lay groaning.
I ate the porridge, standing, Maggur, Giltt and Kel standing around me, easier now that the thing was irrevocable, ignoring it, talking among themselves.
A woman came, and bent over her man, and looked scared at Maggur.
I would be safe now, and want for nothing.
The pains began in my belly.
* * *
Kel, the small one, had, of course, called me “Imma” first. Now they all called me Imma, but it had a new ring to it. It was a concession, and they knew it. I was their mistress. They would defend me, even against Darak himself, although they would never have admitted so much. As it was they swaggered behind me, and I did my best ne
ver to push them beyond their instincts. If other men asked them what they were doing with me like bees around a honey jar, they said I was Darak’s woman, and something special besides, a healer and diviner, with holy blood—the Chief himself had told them to guard me. They had their own girls, it is true, who were jealous and curious, but Maggur took care of this, for no insult or trouble came near me from them. As for Darak, for the five days we were at the wood camp, he was busy with his captains in the great black tent, and I never saw him. A scrap of paper came with his scrawl on it, however. I was mildly surprised that he could write, but the words were uncouthly formed and misspelled in places. It said: The goddess has taken without asking.
I felt there was an understanding between us, or rather that he understood more of me than I did myself. I was still afraid of what I had done.
But those days were full for the first time since I had come from the guts of the mountain. For I took my guard and made them teach me something of their skill with knives and bows, and on the backs of the wild brown horses they caught in the woods and then let go after an hour or so of bruising sport. This was a good time, I could push all doubt and alarm from my mind, and think only of my moving hands and feet, and if my eye could judge far enough. The three were very pleased with me, and proud. If they were in a woman’s power—and they were, though it was too early yet for them to own it to themselves—best it should be a woman who could fight and leap and run as well as they.
I learned quickly, and I was sharp and good. The skills were there in me, in my dreams and recollections. Among the marble courts where the lizards lay now, women and men had not been separate races as they were in this world around me. Although I was far smaller and slighter even than little Kel, yet I could swing an iron long-knife as well as Maggur, and what he could break, I could bend. And I rode the wild horses long after Maggur, with his extra weight to hold him, was flung off. I was Darak then, and a crowd would come and cheer, and Maggur would walk by my side after it, grinning, and Kel would sing.