The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  “Don’t you like it?” He was vulnerable with the giving.

  “Yes,” I said, “more than anything.”

  “I’ve heard you talk of jade in your sleep.” He came close to me, and fastened it around my throat. So cool it was, eight eyes of water set in shores of gold.

  “Darak,” I said softly.

  “Darros,” he corrected me, “and don’t forget.” He kissed my throat. “Put on a ring or two, the gold ones, perhaps that gold bracelet Maggur stole for you from his woman in the wood camp.”

  I did as he said. It was not gaudy, but added a certain richness to the plain white of the dress. I put on too the black shireen, as beyond the narrow window the sun sank red on the roofs of Ankurum.

  Maggur and Gleer and a few of the “guard” went with us, riding the pick of the horses. Ellak, Darak, and I rode in some carriage hired for the purpose, a stuffy rickety conveyance behind two fat ponies. Darak and Ellak fidgeted uneasily in the closed-up interior. Ellak also wore new black, and had trimmed his beard and eyebrows and presumably washed more strenuously than was his wont. He, too, looked handsome, amazingly.

  The carriage jolted noisily.

  “The rain’s finished. We’ll walk back,” Darak vowed.

  2

  I suppose to men like Darak, uncertainty is life, and danger the wine of life. Then, caught up in it, infected by his excitement and coolness, I did not really understand the foolishness of what we did.

  The agent’s house was at the “garden” end of Ankurum, high up, with splendid views from every window, and terraced walks where little fountains tinkled, and tame, brightly colored birds strutted. Alabaster lamps glowed in the portico, through which a steward ushered us. There were murals of naked dancing girls on the walls. I could see Ellak restraining ribaldries. Maggur and the others remained outside. It would be a dull evening for them unless they could start up a dice game or a fight with the other grooms and servants abandoned to nearby taverns.

  Beyond the entrance hall, double doors led into a spacious room from which other spacious rooms led away. Here, among the hanging garlands of flowers, guests wandered, talking politely to each other, and elegantly sipping wine and picking bits from passing trays of savories and sweets.

  Ellak regarded the scene uneasily. Darak looked arrogant with impatient irritation. A servant came to us.

  “Darros of Sigko, sir?”

  Darak nodded.

  The servant, with a flourish or two, conducted us among the guests, most of whom turned to stare, around several ornamental indoor fountains, and up a flight of steps. Here our host, a bulbous shining man, greeted Darak with a cool warmth, and glanced in astonishment at me.

  “You’re most welcome, Darros, most welcome. I am so glad that you could come.”

  Darak’s eyebrows twitched disdainfully as he smiled.

  “My pleasure.”

  “And your companions . . .” The smallish eyes slid back to me. He was fascinated and repelled at once. If I were a tribal woman, I might so easily be uncouth. Plains warriors and their wives were not often seen in Ankurum, but when they came they were treated always as savages.

  “This is my lady,” Darak said. It was a socially acceptable term for mistress. Nevertheless the agent flinched.

  “I am honored by your invitation,” I said, and he relaxed at once.

  “Can it be you come from the north too?” he inquired wonderingly, but his eyes were slipping happily to my breasts.

  “Yes,” I said, “despite my low birth among the tribes, my education has been entirely adequate.”

  Darak grinned quite openly. “I believe there are people here for me to meet,” he said.

  “Indeed. But first, the food. Then the entertainment.”

  Darak nodded. “Of course.”

  The agent’s eyes rolled around to Ellak now, who had plucked three wine cups from a passing tray, and was draining them one after the other.

  * * *

  The meal was served quite soon, though not perhaps soon enough for Ellak, who fell upon it like a starving vulture. Other guests watched in alarm as he stuffed roast meat into his mouth and mopped up the gravy running into his beard with pieces of the fancy bread. Darak, irritated, and perhaps made a little unsure of himself by the flimsy crystal quality of town manners, made no attempt to check him. He himself ate lightly, and I only picked at things as was usual with me, but Ellak burped his way through every course, with an appetite which would have done credit to all three. I had never noticed this particular appetite before among others who ate like wolves, but here it brought a hush on half the room.

  The eating took place in a vast dining area, hung with clusters of candles. The couches were low and cushioned, the tables also low, and everything formed a rough semicircle around the sectioned marble floor. Here jugglers and dancers and acrobats performed to the beat of small drums, the hollow reed sound of pipes.

  As the last dishes were removed, last finger bowls and napkins supplied and fresh trays of wine and sweets served, the innermost section of the marble floor sank inward and down. This sinking device must have been a new addition to the agent’s house, and received some applause. Servants ran to the candle clusters, drew them down on their cords, and dowsed them. Slowly, the floor section began to rise again. The light was very dim, with a slight smoky redness and a smell of incense. The section leveled and I saw what lay on it. A naked woman, her white body painted all over with silver leaves, a net of scarlet jewels between her thighs. As she rose to her feet I saw how she had colored her face—white lips but scarlet glistening lids as if fresh blood had welled from them. But it was the snake which held me. A gasp went up all around. The guests were riveted. A few women squealed, but did not look away. It, too, was red and white, at least as wide as the woman’s waist and twenty feet or more in length. A music began, slow and liquid, dripping from one cadence to another, wrapping itself as sinuously around the woman as did the snake. They were dancing together, winding and twisting about each other. She was one of those that are double jointed; it was no trouble for her to be a serpent too. Suddenly a man came leaping from some door in the far wall, out among the guests. He jumped into the center of the floor, turning somersaults, while the woman leaned before him wound around with the snake, waiting.

  My blood ran like ice. I felt I was choking. The man’s body was painted gold. Where had they got this ritual? Had they remembered it, unknowing? Did the corruption still live in them, the legacy of the lost demons who had bred me?

  The dance went on, and they were together now, wrapped in a simulation of pleasure, the snake threading in and out between their bodies.

  Then the section of the floor sank, the lights were rekindled. The guests stirred, waking, and began to applaud.

  “Such artistry!”

  “A triumph of beauty!”

  The veneer of culture upon their sickly depravity.

  I looked at Darak, but he and Ellak were laughing together slyly at it, aroused, but honestly so, not hiding anything under a cloak of words.

  The agent came toward us, receiving congratulations on every hand as he passed.

  “Ah, Darros, there is a man I would like you to meet.”

  We got up, and followed him from the hot room onto a cool terrace looking out across the town. Little trees in pots swayed in the night breeze. The moon shone high. Already it was late, though lights still burned in Ankurum.

  The man was waiting for us, leaning casually on the balustrade. He wore a long robe, black, and without ornament. His hair seemed the only vanity, oiled and curled and very long, that, and the magnificent ruby on his left hand. It matched the glitter in his eyes. A hard, aging, calculating face. I did not trust him much, but neither did he sicken or amuse me.

  “May I present to you Darros of Sigko, our famous merchant trader. Raspar of Ankurum.” The agent fussily bow
ed himself away, apparently undisturbed at being a superfluity in his own house.

  The man nodded to Darak and Ellak. He took my hand and kissed it with routine ceremony. He did not ask who I was, or seem particularly interested in me.

  “Did you enjoy our friend’s entertainment?” he inquired of Darak. “Quite ingenious I thought it, for all it was so slenderly composed. However. No doubt you would like to discuss business after such a long wait to do so.”

  “I should be glad to discuss business.”

  “That’s good. I hear you have several wagon loads of metal and weapons, fine stuff from northern workshops. Possibly”—he smiled indulgently—“you are unaware of the extent of my concern in this matter. I am well-known in Ankurum, I assure you. I would naturally not expect you to believe me without some surety, but I can take all your merchandise off your hands at once, without the use of an intermediary.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Indeed. But before we go any further with this . . . I have heard a good many tales about you. You are one of the few men to get a caravan from the north to Ankurum without losing half of it. Did you never encounter any trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Bandits. I’m told they rule the hills. Not to mention the tribes of the plains.”

  Darak indicated me casually.

  “You see I have my safeguard against that.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “As for bandits,” Darak said, “I know their minds well enough. And I have my guard.”

  “Then you enjoy dangerous work, Darros of Sigko?”

  Darak said nothing. He looked Raspar of Ankurum between the eyes, and smiled his hard white smile. It was theatrical, but explicit nevertheless.

  “I see you do. And they also tell me that you are a great handler of horses. I hear you mastered a wild unbroken one a day ago in the market.”

  “I was bred with horses,” Darak said.

  “Good. And were you bred with chariots too?”

  The stiffness of suspense fell over all of us. This was so much more than idle talk.

  Darak said levelly, “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ll be blunt,” Raspar said, he who could never quite be that. “I’ve a mind to extend my business concerns to include the breeding of horses. I have my farm already, a few miles outside Ankurum, and from that farm I have got myself a team of three wild blacks. For the sake of my business name, I want some young man—some danger-loving young man who knows his horses as well as he knows his women—to race my team in the Sirkunix. And, naturally, win.”

  Darak laughed, short and sharp. It would have been a contemptuous gesture if his eyes had not shone so brightly. Yes, he could not resist. Already he was on the Straight. When he said, “I know chariots,” I was not sure if it were true or not. Then he added: “Also I know a little of the race. Is it the one I hear most of that you want?”

  “It is the one.” Raspar smiled. “Of course, there are many other bouts, and many other races—horse alone, and horse and chariot too. But this one is the empress of the races, and also carries the largest prize.” He glanced at Ellak, thoughtful. “Of course, you’ll need to find an archer too. If they haven’t told you, it will have to be a thin small man, a boy if you have one. Tidy enough to keep his feet, light enough that the horses hardly notice him there. Do you have such?”

  Darak glanced at me.

  “I have one.”

  In anger and bewilderment, I stared back at him. I too had heard a little of this race. Ankurum was full of it, and the men had brought it back to the hostelry. The Sagare they called it, and it was death. Six chariots or more, each with a team of three, each one with driver—and archer—whose mission was to disable the other chariots, while under a hail of arrows from his opponent’s men. By the two laws of the Sagare you aimed neither at men nor horses, yet, so easy to misjudge—or judge right if it came to that. And beyond all this were the four obstacles of the course which represented the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, each one passed through six times in the six laps of the race. Not many lived after the Sagare. And Darak held both of us so light he would throw both of us into it at the whim of this man, simply because he could not resist his own madness.

  “No,” I said. “Darros.”

  Raspar looked at me, lifted his hands, laughed.

  “Forgive me. But a woman?”

  “She can use a bow better than any man under me. And she has the weight, or lack of it.”

  “I will need, of course, proof of all this.”

  “You shall have it.”

  They were talking as if I had no part in it, I, who had the worst part, the victim of a town’s ancient blood lusts, color for the sand of their arena.

  “No,” I said again. “Did you not hear me?”

  “Your lady is perhaps wise,” Raspar said. “Possibly she has heard every archer rides bare to the waist behind his shield.”

  This stupidity angered me even more. I said nothing.

  “Well,” Raspar said, “we can discuss it tomorrow. I will send a man for you in the morning. About the fifth hour after dawn? I’ll show you my farm, Darros; it may interest you. And now I must be on my way.” He bowed to me, nodded to Darak, and went off the terrace, across the candlelit room.

  Darak turned to Ellak. “Go and get Maggur and the others out of the brothels. We’ll be leaving soon.”

  Ellak grinned and went away.

  Darak leaned back on the balustrade, began to pry a plant loose from the marble with his restless fingers.

  “You realize,” he said, after a moment, “this man will take all our goods, quickly, and for a high price, if we do what he wants.”

  “As his tame dogs would do it,” I said.

  “Worth it,” Darak said. “We can’t idle here forever, waiting for some northern messenger to come galloping with news of the ambush at the ford. It would take a while, but thwart Raspar and he might well block our sale long enough for that to happen. Besides, the prize is high. Three hundred gold ovals to the charioteer and two hundred to the archer.”

  “The archer should have twice that.”

  “The archer would be nothing without the man who holds the team.”

  “Find another,” I said. “If you go to die, go alone. I am not a slave-wife to be burned on your pyre.”

  “I could have had Kel,” he said.

  I turned away, coldness running through me. After a second or so I felt his hand warm on my arm.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ll find another to do it. But you rode with me before, and fought. I would trust my back to you.” I looked up at him and his face was tense. “I don’t believe you can die,” he said to me. He twisted the curls of my hair around his fingers as I stared at him. And after a time I seemed to stare through him, back to the volcano, back to Shullatt’s knife, back to the lightning which struck me at the pillars and threw me, but did not even burn. Another time I might have shut my ears, but not this time. “We’ll go now,” he said.

  He took my arm and led me across the room, the other rooms, across the vestibule, through the portico and the terraced gardens onto the street. I suppose that was the way we went. I did not see it.

  3

  The night was cool, not cold. Not many lights now, burning in window spaces. Braziers on street corners threw orange color in our faces. The moon too was orange, lower and less distinct.

  Abruptly, the thought of the hostelry seemed unpleasant and oppressive.

  “I do not want to go back to that room,” I said to Darak.

  He turned to Ellak, and the others on their horses, without any hesitation. A shut-in place was not a happy place for Darak in any case.

  “Go back on your own. We’re going another way.”

  They swung off at once, except for Maggur.

  “Well, you great bull, wh
at are you waiting for?”

  “Bad to walk alone in a town by night,” Maggur said. Earnestly he added: “There may be pickpockets and robbers about.”

  Darak looked quite blank.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “A law-abiding man such as myself forgets these hazards.”

  Maggur grinned.

  “Ride off, you fool,” Darak said. “I can take care of anything we meet. Besides, there are the warden’s soldiers prowling the streets every night to keep order. I can always call one of those.” He slapped Maggur’s horse on the rump, and it ran off, Maggur still grinning on its back.

  So we walked.

  It was a strange, quiet time between us. We did not speak for a long while, or even move close together. Yet he did not seem uneasy with me. Once, when two of the patrolling guards swung by, he put his arm around me. They scarcely glanced at us, two lovers coming home from a supper, perhaps.

  There was a little river that ran through Ankurum, stonewalled, but very shallow. Things floated on it which the townspeople had thrown in: broken clay bowls, fruit peel, a little white, drowned doll. We followed this river, a perilous enterprise, which meant clambering over walls, rustling across private gardens, and through wastelands sharp with stinging weeds. We were children then, muffling laughter, slipping by the dark windows. At last the river ran underground, its stone mouth narrowing among a group of trees, where flowers turned pale faces up to us from the rank grass.

  “Soon be dawn,” Darak said. He pushed me back against a trunk, lifted the veil of the shireen a little, and kissed me.

  “Darak,” I said. I leaned against him and shut my eyes. “Darak, I am afraid. Afraid of myself.”

  He held me away from him.

  “We are all afraid of ourselves,” he said. “Not all of us know it.”

  It did not seem surprising for him to understand such a thing, this bandit, who burned now only to risk his neck in the arena.