by Tanith Lee
Water was next, and Raspar did not have the underground springs that bubbled beneath the Sirkunix; instead we learned our lesson hard under the torrents of gigantic tipped buckets swung by chains from above by Raspar’s laughing, jibing servants. My bow and shafts hung wet and useless a hundred times before Darak had mastered it, and I had mastered the art of shield-covering them if he misjudged. And then came Fire.
It was the tenth day, and the Games had already begun at Ankurum. The Sirkunix was near enough the town walls, that in stillnesses during the day, the occasional roaring shout of loud anger or joy would soar up to the farm. It was the wrestling, beast fights, and acrobatics. The races would begin four days from now, and two days from that would be the crowning race, the empress, the Sagare. That tenth dawn, we knew we had six days left alone to prepare ourselves for victory or death.
And so, between those flaming poles, which were the symbols of the pillars in the arena, we rode well enough, because we must.
* * *
The farm villa was cool and white, a sparsely but tastefully furnished dwelling, which provided the elegance and business threads in the dangerous plait. Here, the transaction had long since been signed, witnessed, and almost forgotten, it was so light a thing now in this preparation for the race. Darak’s goods were gone. In return he had a handsome price, a price, he assured me, beyond anything he could have hoped for otherwise, while working through an intermediary agent.
“Once we are the victors of the Sagare, we can ride back like kings,” he said to me, but his eyes had the lost, bright, fevered look of Bellan’s now. He was charioteer, mind, flesh, and soul; even asleep. I felt his body quiver, alive with the rush of the chariot. Rarely did he turn to me for love in the dark. He was exhausted; besides, Bellan had warned us both, frank and expressionless.
“If you have sense, you’ll leave each other be in bed till this is over. A man drives from his head, his hands, his feet, and his loins. As for your woman, if you should chance to get her pregnant now, you’re lost. When do you bleed?” he added to me. “Not on the day of the race, I trust?” I told him I did not know. There seemed as yet to be no timing with me, as with other women. “I’ll get you a draft,” Bellan said. “It’ll dry you till the race is over. Women—” He made a gesture of disgust. “If you were not the genius you are with a bow, I’d never have let you near this thing.”
And so, on the tenth evening, the race six days away, we sat with Raspar, the dinner over. Candles flickered, licking light colors from the silver plates and onyx cups. Outside, crickets sounded in the warm dusk.
“You are what I guessed you to be,” Raspar said to Darak. “You held them through the fire. Mark you, they have been trained to look flame in the eye since they were foaled. I have seen men ride into the Sagare with horses unbroken to fire, and I shall see it again. A fool’s trick. It only ends one way.” He refilled his own and Darak’s cup. “I have entered your name already.”
Darak nodded.
“You ride as Darros of Sigko, not as my man. Best this way. Ankurum knows and marvels at your feat in bringing in your caravan. You’re a famous hero. There will be no mention of me, but I’ll have my men moving through the stadium, ready to explain who owns the three fine blacks. That should do it.” He smiled, his friendly, half-shuttered smile. “You said you would take scarlet as your color. That’s very good. No Ankurum man has dared this race, and scarlet is Ankurum’s device—from the vine. They’ll shout for you for that. I believe the bills are already hammered up. And you’ll win.”
Darak grinned, tense, amused, defiant. Raspar glanced at me.
“I cannot see your lady’s face under her shireen. Does she have any doubts?”
“Bellan is a brilliant man for chariots,” I said, “but can we trust his judgment? Has he no longing to be in Darros’ place?”
“You mean some slip of the tongue, lack of advice, through bitterness?” Raspar smiled again. “I see you understand a little of the human mind. Well, you’ve no need to fear. He will want Darros to take that race for a very fair reason. There is a man—Essandar of Coppain—who is entered for the Sagare. It was his chariot that tipped Bellan’s into the Skora at the stadium there. It was not a Sagare, that one, a simpler race altogether, but still dangerous. The chariot axle gave from the impact, the horse inside left fell. Bellan was flung among the team behind. He hates Essandar, as well he might. I do not know all of it, but I gather it was less luck than a personal thing between them, over some girl.”
It was late when we left the farm.
“From tomorrow on you’ll stay here at night,” Raspar said. “I know you like to keep one eye on your men, and, from what I’ve heard about them in the town, it’s just as well. But give your Ellak charge. No more of this riding back and forth. You’ll need cosseting after the day’s work. I have a masseur coming, one for each of you, male and female. Besides, now that you have the mastery of the track, you’ll be on show a little. Some of the Warden’s ladies are coming to watch the famed and handsome Darros handle the team tomorrow, and they may well stay to eat with me. The rich idlers will want to come and judge your form so they can lay their bets.”
As we rode back along the dark road to the Ring Gate, I said: “I told you. Raspar tames dogs to do tricks for his customers and patrons.”
Darak laughed.
It would not trouble him, gypsy, boaster, showman that he was. Let them all come and stare.
* * *
And they came.
If anything, it was worse than all the fire and pain, that anger which must be restrained. I, with the arrow poised, how dear to my soul it would have been not to loose at the three running targets, but at that crowd of fools by the fence.
The curl-haired women in their litters and carriages, shimmering in their snow-white frocks. I had chosen my dress well indeed, for the agent’s supper. White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled. With their white, they wore clusters of jewels of every color and in every setting, gold, silver, copper, and a metal they call alcum, a kind of dark gray stuff, that shines with an incredible blue light under the sun. The men were much the same, white tight trousers clinging as a second skin, with built-out shoulders and sleeves slashed red, orange, yellow.
The women, and some of the men also, cooed and sighed at Darak; called him over between runs. He had no time for the men, and showed it, yet despite their sulks, they could see he was a likely winner. They had spent time at the practice track attached to the Sirkunix itself, and apparently no one there came near the standard to which Bellan had got us. With the women, Darak was amenable. They gestured lightly at me with pale ringed hands, and laughed. Darak laughed with them.
Some men came after me to a corner field.
“Clos and I are agreed. We really must watch for you in the arena. You know the custom—bare to the waist. I beg you don’t hold the shield too close, sweetheart.”
I turned to Bellan, who was standing a little behind me, supervising the rub a groom was giving the blacks. He, I knew, had little time for these bystanders.
“Bellan,” I said, “would it be an insult to my host Raspar to put my knife between the ribs of these two?”
I saw, from the tail of my eye, they backed off, laughing a little nervously.
“Yes,” Bellan said. He grinned. “Alas.”
“Then I must not do it,” I said. Deliberately, I unlaced my shirt and pulled it back, leaving my breasts bare. The two men exclaimed, one flushed, embarrassed. I stood still a moment, while, flustered, they tried to call up something lecherously witty to say; then, unhurriedly, I laced the shirt again. “Now, gentlemen,” I said, “I have fulfilled my duties to my host. Perhaps next time you come to watch, you would wear less jewelry. It tends to catch the sun and flash in the eyes of
the horses. In my eyes, too, when I take aim. I might misfire.”
I could tell they took my meaning. They turned and went off, one muttering, “Damned whoring tribal bitch.”
Bellan chuckled. It was the first time he had come near to liking me.
“You’ve a word for yourself, I see,” he said, “but careful. Not good to make an enemy before a race.” The laugh went off his face. His left arm twitched.
* * *
Five days, four days. We were pummeled by the masseurs until our flesh rang. Dieted also—though for me, this had no use—lean foods, and little wine or beer. Even when the day was over, Darak would spend hours with the horses, talking to them, fondling them.
“You and they must be four parts of one whole,” Bellan said. “And you,” he said to me, “you are the black crow on the dead man’s shoulder, jealous for what carries you.” I was handling by then the things they called “spiced” arrows—no longer the “plain” ones I had had that first time. You took what you wanted into the arena, it seemed, arrows spiced with anything you fancied. The most used were corded—a tail of thin rope fixed on the flight; shot in between hub and rim, they would tangle the spokes and foul the wheels. The wheels were a popular target. Hollow arrows, filled with small iron balls, would be fired through, snap on the spokes, and spill their dangerous cargo under the hooves of anything coming after. Yet these had their disadvantages—one would meet one’s own artillery coming back. There were many other devices, all clever, but the trouble was to make these arrows fly. Now, in addition to allowing for the movement of one’s own chariot, and the movement of the other chariot, one must allow for altered weight, cords that might slew the shaft sideways, or tangle on the bosses of the vehicle one rode—a thousand precautions and difficulties, and more.
Three days, two days. Bellan looked slyly at me.
“With one plain arrow,” he said, “and your sharp eye, you might try for the classic shot. Three times only is there a record of it in the Sagare.”
I asked him what it was.
“To slice a man’s reins in two. The leather flies wide. The control of his team goes from his grasp. He’s finished. Try it.”
Ten times around the turns I tried on one of the practice chariots behind us. But I could not make it happen. The reins flick, move, are never still. I was glad the elegant crowds had gone to the races at last, and were not there to see it.
* * *
One day more before that Day.
It had been almost easy till then to shut out fear. The grueling toil, the drum of advice always pounding in the ears, the cruel masseurs like two giant-people, the tiredness, the thick black swoon of sleep with dreams so deeply buried they were not recalled. But that day before the Day, they were easier with us. We rested late, and not till noon did we go out to the track to try the chariot that would carry us in the Sagare. Black metal, gleaming like the horses, set with red enamel suns and golden vine trails, a queen among chariots, and with the blacks between her scarlet shafts, that perfect unison only an artist of the stadium could have made. Bellan grinned at our praises. The chariot had come from Raspar’s own workshops, after Bellan’s design. In it, riding, fast, fast, we were one thing in all truth; even I, the sitting crow, was part of it. Bellan let us fly on the track, and did not call us back, allowing us for once the clear pure joy of it. But after that wine, the day turned bitter.
The blacks were sent to rest, and Darak and I lazed in the villa court among the lemon trees in pots, and the clambering vines. We played a dice game with Maggur, but were interrupted by Ellak.
Twelve of Darak’s men had gone out into the town, started up a drunken brawl, half-killed a few brothel guards, and were now in the Warden’s prisons. Darak’s face went white. He stood up, sending the dice crashing, and hit Ellak violently across the face.
“You brainless clod, can’t you keep order half a day without me on your back!”
Ellak was used to obeying, but also used to Darak’s justice within the bandit creed. He shook himself, and his hand almost involuntarily slid toward his knife. At once Darak was on him, and the first blow knocked Ellak back against the wall. The second blow would have knocked him clear through it had not Maggur got Darak’s shoulders. Darak’s anger settled in the instant. He shook Maggur off, turned away from both of them, and poured himself wine, his knuckles pale on the stem of the cup.
“Get out,” he said.
They went.
He drained the cup, then slung it clattering across the court. His whole body twitched with tension. Looking at his face, always lean and hard, I saw abruptly how much thinner, how much harder it had become. Yes, he was gypsy and showman, but he would run to the horse, leap and ride. No time to doubt or hesitate. His training had been well enough for his skill and body, but what for his waiting, thinking mind?
“Darak,” I said.
He turned and looked at me, his eyes black and bright, with nothing behind them but the burning tension.
I went in, and he followed me. In the apartments Raspar had granted us, I drew off his clothes and mine, soothed his taut body with my lips and tongue and fingers, roused him, and drew him into me, and when the fire had drained from him, he lay quiet and still against me.
“Bellan would be hard on you,” he murmured.
“Bellan would know,” I said.
Soon he slept, and I held him gently in sleep, but now my mind would not be still.
Death, death. Black death, scarlet death. Death red as the vine of Ankurum. Lying so quiet, I longed to scream aloud. In a half-dream I saw those phantoms of my lost race crowding in to seize me, and Darak’s hands, holding me from the lip of the precipice, slipped suddenly from mine and I was gone. Yet it was he that fell. I saw him broken far below. Darak, you are man, human man, wicked but not evil; if I lose you in that place of fire tomorrow I shall slip back into the dark. Let me remember, when you fall, I must take the reins and wind them around my neck so that the running horses snap it. No healing for that wounding, surely.
6
The rest of that day before the Day was hazy; lamplight, a little more wine than usual, the expansive jokes and laughter, the early sleep we were sent to.
It was perhaps an hour before dawn that I woke. I was weeping, and did not quite know why, but it was Darak who had woken me. He was tossing, struggling, crying out in his sleep, and when I touched him his skin was burning hot and running sweat.
“Darak,” I said.
I held him and tried to bring him back gently, but it was no use; I shook him and he would not wake, so I slapped him across the face, once, twice, three times until his eyes came open and he stared at me. At first he did not even see the room or me, only the thing in his mind still; then his eyes cleared.
“Ah, god,” he said. He sat up, then rose, flung open the window shutters, and stared out at the paling darkness. A fresh green smell blew upward from the farm, but the pores of his skin stiffened at the predawn chill.
“What, Darak?” I asked. “What?”
“The chariot and team,” he said. “It and I and they: one thing. Hill country, riding fast, good riding. And then the villages and the lake, that old damned place of childhood. I saw the cloud on the mountain, scarlet. There was a woman up behind me—not you—a woman. ‘The pillars of fire,’ she said. And Makkatt split open. Red, red blood. Fire. Fire everywhere, the villages burning, the chariot burning, riding in the fire, and this woman behind me, cold as ice—”
He broke off. It was so still, only the slight rustle of the vine in a breeze, as it clung on the villa walls.
He was afraid, and he had kept it from himself. Now he knew. To know fear might well be death to this man on this Day. The old superstition and belief still rotten in him—oh, no, that woman was not I, yet also it was, for it was the She-One who rode behind him, with her white mask-face and scarlet robe, in the dreamland of terror.
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Again the vine stirred and with it a memory, a thought.
I went to him and put my arm about him.
“Only a dream,” I said. “Dreams mean nothing. I should know that. Today they will be offering in the temples of the gods of Ankurum, those seven that ride with us. To gods of light, gods of battle, gods of archers, gods of horses. But we are riding for Ankurum, not Sigko, wearing the color of the vine. The goddess knows it.” He did not look at me. I said, “I am going to the temple of the vine-goddess to offer, and beg her protection for the honor of her red.”
“Go if you want,” he said. But he was leaning toward my thought. Superstition, which had harmed him, might heal its own wound.
“Come with me,” I said.
* * *
There had been no bad weather for the Games. This was a last warm smiling time that came before the rains. But this day was best of all. The dawn was straining green and rose over the rocky hills and the farmlands, a hundred shades of pink on the mountain sides. Birds sang furiously, ripe apples had fallen on the road over orchard walls. The ground was drenched in dew. We wore plain dark clothes; my hair was free and hanging down my back. We did not yet have the splendor of the arena on us.